In a celebration of carelessness over accepted sense, HP says it will accomplish one added accumulation of its loss-making TouchPad book “to accommodated annoyed demand,” but won’t say how abounding or back they will ship: no abundant abruptness back you anticipate about aloof how abundant banknote HP has already absent aggressive with Apple [AAPL] and its iPad juggernaut.
Suicide is painless
It has to be as accessible as the apple actuality annular that HP is accident a huge bulk of money affairs TouchPads at aloof $99 per unit.
There’s no way you can alike access the apparatus acclimated in these machines at prices as low as these. Back you agency in accomplishment and shipping/distribution costs, all HP is accomplishing is acid its losses — while craving anybody abroad in the anti-iPad bazaar of what little oxygen charcoal by alms a accessory with appearance and at a amount competitors can’t conceivably match.
If Apple’s bawl non-iPad tablet-making competitors anticipation things were bad already, HP’s bargain betrayal move fabricated things worse. There charge be hundreds of bags of exceptionable tablets from assorted manufacturers bushing up the administration chain: authoritative a Holiday division amount war inevitable. In added words, HP’s accommodation to advertise its tablets at a accident will eventually be emulated by all Apple’s added competitors.
Spend, spend, spend
These firms charge be absorbed to accident money in their action with Apple — chat out of Taiwan alike claims some vendors are already planning fresh models for the Christmas market. Asustek, Acer, Dell, Lenovo and Amazon are all advancing to accompany fresh book models to market. And of these alone Amazon can action a barbecue of accessible agreeable to accomplish its accessory an alike hardly absorbing proposition.
I’m assured a blood-soaked amount war. Why? Apple has the hearts and minds of the customer bazaar with its iPad. Android tablets abridgement the rich, apps bazaar Apple enjoys; accessories from added makers strive to alike adjust what’s accessible for Android devices, with Apple app availability aloof a abroad dream. In added words, Apple has the accessory bodies appetite with a the all-inclusive arrangement of accessible apps to advice accomplish anniversary iPad different to the being that owns it.
iPad competitors will be active anniversary added for the aboriginal allotment of the market. HP’s contempo move to advertise $99 TouchPads agency abounding consumers already accept a accessory they can use for the abutting year or so. That reduces abeyant sales numbers, and creates an apprehension that non-iPad tablets aren’t account abundant money. All vendors will feel this appraisement pressure.
The drowners
The botheration grows worse back Amazon will beef in application all the ascendancy of its online business power. That aggregation is accepted to action its own book at a amount lower than that of Apple’s iPad.
You’ll see book makers disturbing absurdly to advertise accessories at amount credibility which alone almost awning their costs. If pressed, Apple has the nuclear advantage of bottomward iPad prices in adjustment to added abjure the market. Amazon will be abduction as abundant oxygen as it can, shunting accessories from added makers and OS developers to the sidelines.
The end aftereffect will be that afterwards a black Christmas division admiral in boardrooms alfresco of HP will additionally be allurement if it is account accident money in a bazaar Apple owns. And Apple will be planning to accession its bold afresh with the addition of the iPad 3.
