What RIM Can Learn from HP Touchpad $99 Sale

I’m a big Blackberry Playbook user since it came out but I also have love tablet computing in general and follow it consistently.

Its been a week since HP announced its planning to get away from the computer business and is axing BWebOS. I felt really sad when I heard this news since I’m a big fan of Palm, the original creators of WebOS. I think HP has no idea what they’re letting go and seems illogical to quit when they’ve spent so much effort already.

I still don’t know what HP is planning with WebOS, but something interesting happened this weekend and that was a firesale on the HP Touchpad. If you haven’t seen the Touchpad its a WebOS tablet with a beautiful 9.7 inch screen and comes with a browser that can run flash. Some compare the Touchpad as very similar to the Ipad minus a little speed and the collection of apps.

In the past two days the HP Touchpad has had a surge in sales and is the number 1 selling tablet in the market beating the Apple Ipad. Its currently trending top 10 in Google trends and is the most popular tablet in most online and offline retailers. What makes its rise was a simple change in price from $399 to $99 for the 16GB model.Although HP is loosing money for every Touchpad being sold, the price drop has some unexpected results like more users using WebOS and I’m sure something they never thought possible beat the iPad in sales .

The lost of WebOS is sad but maybe RIM and other manufactures can learn from this.

1. Brand and Price comes first.
2. Apps are important but not that important.

I think in table market it should be okay to loose money on a first generation device as long as you can get as many users as you can. Manufacturers should find ways to make money other than selling the hardware like in the case of RIM use Blackberry Messenger a central feature of the Playbook and charge for premium services like high quality VOIP or HD video calling.

The tablet market is growing worldwide I don’t think the Playbook needs to be beat the iPad or the Android to survive. But making the Playbook cheaper certainly would help getting more apps for QNX and pave the way for more apps for future Blackberry phones.