HP Touchpad Back in stock!

The HP Touch Pad is coming back into stock from tomorrow for a limited period, check it out here. Don’t know what the Touchpad is? Then read on.

Two weeks ago a new tablet hit the stores and it sold out instantly. The demand for the tablet was so high that our parent company The Carphone Warehouse had to add a specific out of stock message to their homepage. At this point tech addicts were hunting hi and low to find a retailer that still had stock of this wonder device. You’d be forgiven if you thought this was
Apple’s newest gizmo as the panic buying reached unprecedented levels, however the device in question is not born from the ideology of Steve Jobs. We’re in fact talking about the HP Touchpad.

The Touchpad Runs on a unique operating system called “Web OS” which is solid in design, usability and well respected within the tablet world.  It offers the best level of multitasking found on any mobile device and the build quality is exceptional. You might now be thinking why was this so popular but you haven’t head about it? Well the reason the Touchpad has sold so well isn’t due to it’s clever OS or it’s processing power, it isn’t because it offers a revolutionary experience, no, the HP Touchpad is like gold dust for one specific reason. It’s cheap, really really cheap.

Last Month HP decided to get out of the PC hardware game and is closing down it’s consumer manufacturing business.  As a result the HP Touchpad and it’s mobile phone the PRE are also coming to an end before they’ve really had a chance to shine. Due to this announcement the future of Web OS was cast into doubt with nobody sure if the platform would be able to survive against the likes of Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. It’s been known for a while that a mobile OS is judged by the apps that are available for it. Apple’s 500,000 apps available for iPhone and iPad have made it one of the most popular devices in the world. In contrast Nokia’s struggle to encourage app developers for their Symbian operating system has resulted in Nokia abandoning ship and hoping into bed with Microsoft and Windows Mobile.

As Nokia has demonstrated a lack of app developers can lead to difficult times for any operating system and with HP ceasing the production of all Web OS devices any fans intending to develop apps for the Touchpad or PRE will find themselves second guessing if any rewards will be received for their efforts. Web OS could be over before it’s really started. So why is the Touchpad still so popular?

For two reasons. The first being the HP Touchpad was going to Launch with a price tag of around £400, after HP’s announcement to get out of the manufacturing business the price was dropped to a staggering £89.00 for the 16GB variant and £115 for the 32GB variant. When you compare this to other tablets on the market, the Specs just don’t stand up. Google “10 inch tablets” and you won’t find any at this price point from a household brand. The other reason being that even though the software is solid and out of the box will do what most people use a tablet for (Web browsing, watching movies, listening to music, amending documents) a bunch of Android fans are working tirelessly to port Google’s Android OS onto the Touchpad. If they’re successful  an £89 tablet with such a great spec running an OS with over 100,00 apps would be a clear winner in the market place.