H.P.'s TouchPad Tablet Was Bound to Be a Flop, Some Say
The TouchPad tablet from Hewlett-Packard was one of the most closely watched new gadgets of 2011 — and quickly turned out to be the year's biggest flop. The TouchPad, which was supposed to be a rival to Apple's iPad …
Context & Ripple Effects
The verdict on the TouchPad closes a year-long arc that began with high expectations and ended in retreat. Internal testing reported in August showed webOS running over twice as fast on an iPad than on HP's own hardware — an early signal the product was outmatched before launch. When sales stalled, HP's fire sale liquidated inventory at fire-sale prices and became the story's defining image.
The aftermath was stranger than the flop itself: the clearance pricing briefly made HP the No. 2 tablet maker by unit volume, even as the company abandoned the platform. By December, the cancelled TouchPad Go surfaced as a reviewed curiosity, and reporting from June had already pointed to Windows 8 tablets as HP's next bet after it spurned Android.
First-order effects
- Hewlett-Packard exits consumer tablet hardware with webOS, having written off the TouchPad line within weeks of launch while Apple's iPad faces no credible webOS rival.
- Buyers who paid full price for a $499-class tablet saw its value collapse to clearance levels in days, leaving early adopters holding depreciated devices.
Second-order effects
- The fire-sale volumes that made HP the No. 2 tablet maker by units show how quickly demand appears at the right price — pressuring every Android tablet maker whose hardware sits above impulse-pricing territory.
- Developers and partners who built for webOS lose their target platform, pushing that app investment toward iOS and Android and reinforcing the two-ecosystem tablet market.
Third-order effects
- If HP's pivot holds, the PC incumbent's tablet strategy shifts from proprietary OS to licensing Microsoft's next platform — making Windows 8 the last realistic third path against iPad and Android dominance.
- The episode sets a template other hardware makers will study: launching a me-too tablet without ecosystem or cost advantage risks a write-off, tilting the industry toward fewer, larger platforms.
The trend: Tablets are consolidating around Apple's and Google's ecosystems, forcing PC incumbents like Hewlett-Packard to abandon proprietary operating systems and license their way back into the market.