HP surprisingly emerges as No. 2 tablet maker
At least for now, Hewlett-Packard can lay claim to as the second most-popular tablet manufacturer behind Apple. — Too bad, it'll be a short-lived reign. — Sorry, Jon, the Touchpad is no more. — Despite all of the attention on Apple's iPad …
Context & Ripple Effects
The ranking is an artifact of HP's own retreat. In May 2011 HP was promising the TouchPad would be 'better than number one'; by August it had killed the device after internal testing showed webOS running over twice as fast on an iPad than on its own hardware, and the resulting clearance sell-through is what now puts HP behind only Apple in unit terms.
The reign is explicitly short-lived because the product driving it no longer exists. HP's live tablet bet has already moved on: earlier this month it launched the $699 Windows-based Slate 2 with stylus and Swype, a pricing posture set before the fire-sale established how cheap consumers would pay for a TouchPad.
First-order effects
- HP holds the No. 2 tablet spot on residual TouchPad inventory moving at clearance prices, not on demand for a supported product — the rank ends when stock does.
- Apple's lead is untouched; the entire contest for second place is being fought among vendors whose tablet programs have stumbled.
Second-order effects
- HP's own Slate 2 launch is undercut by its predecessor: a $699 Windows slate competes for buyers who just saw the same-size TouchPal cleared out near giveaway prices, pressuring HP's new pricing.
- Rival tablet makers inherit a distorted benchmark — quarterly unit-share charts will show a dead product ahead of every shipping Android tablet, complicating their marketing claims.
Third-order effects
- If clearance-driven share becomes routine, tablet rankings measure channel dynamics rather than platform health, weakening unit share as a signal of which ecosystems survive.
- The pattern pushes PC makers toward licensed OSes — HP's pivot from webOS to Windows slates suggests hardware vendors conclude they cannot fund both a mobile OS and devices against Apple's integrated model.
The trend: Tablet market share is increasingly shaped by exit firesales and OS licensing pivots rather than sustainable product lines, as PC vendors cycle through failed platforms in iPad's shadow.