Back in August, Hewlett Packard had reduced the price of the TouchPad to a mere $99 because it planned to discontinue the tablet completely due to weak sales and demand. This led to a massive firesale and now it seems HP has finally run out of TouchPads as a notice went around the company notifying the same. This was reflected in the sales page which showed no direct sale but rather an option for notification via email when stock is available again. Currently, the only source of a TouchPad seems to be BestBuy which just announced that a 32GB version will be offered for $149 with a purchase of an HP or Compaq laptop, desktop or All in One.
This lack of devices comes because of the abortion of production of TouchPads. This is based on a report from Friday, when Asian newspaper Digitimes had reported that the company that actually manufactures the TouchPads, Inventec, had given pink slips to 400 employees because it had to stop producing HPs “web OS Tablet PCs”. Furthermore, there seems to be no orders set for the future either.
While the hardware aspect of the TouchPad is undoubtedly shut off, rumors about the closure of the webOS division, the one responsible for the software on the TouchPad are growing too. In a recent press conference, HP CEO, Meg Whitman said that they would take a couple more months to finalize the decision on the webOS division.
The TouchBad became the leader in tablet sales during August when HP brought the price of the 16GB variant from nearly $400 to $99. Retailers drastically ran out of stock and HP said a fresh stock would come according to the notice on its homepage but that is the same even now so it doesn’t look like new TouchPads are going to be produced.
