Tristan Louis uses HP’s (involuntary) “experiment” with TouchPad pricing to examine tablet pricing.
It seems the HP touchpad has given the industry an idea of what the market is willing to pay for a tablet not produced by Apple. [...]
The market wants an inexpensive tablet that works relatively decently and they’re willing to spend $250–300 for it.
Interesting analysis worth going through to keep the numbers in mind, but the conclusion catches the bigger picture: it is now a race to become the #2 tablet operating system, not the #1 [1]. Cheap MP3 players have followed the iPod in masses, and yet iPods still dominate the portable music space by mind share and market share. iTunes may need a diet, but it worked well and helped Apple open a breach into the Windows Universe.
Notes:
- And with already Android #2 in smartphones, HP may actually be telling us that it thinks #3 isn’t attractive enough, and that it doesn’t feel able enough to win #2 against Google.
