Samsung shows HP how to 'sell' tablets

By on Aug 19, 2011 at 11:40 AM
Retail August 19, 2011

Sixteen months following Hewlett-Packard’s acquisition of Palm and just two months after launching the first webOS tablet, HP is giving up. The decision to axe webOS certainly wasn’t made lightly, and numerous factors undoubtedly contributed to the tech giant’s ultimate decision to put an end to its efforts with the TouchPad and other webOS hardware. Near the top of HP’s list, however, was likely the tablet’s sell-through rate. A report from earlier this week claimed that Best Buy, the nation’s top consumer electronics retailer, couldn’t even sell 10% of its TouchPad inventory despite a huge advertising campaign and a $100 price drop. But did HP jump the gun? A new Best Buy promotion might reveal what could have been a great way to move that TouchPad inventory: give it away. Beginning Saturday, customers who purchase a $1,500 Samsung 3D HDTV, model UN46D6900W, will get a free Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet with their purchase. Coincidentally, Best Buy also carries a $1,500 HP ENVY 2070nr Core i7 laptop, and what better way to boost those sell-through numbers than to hand TouchPads out with purchases like ketchup packets at a ballpark? Best Buy’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 deal will run for one week, ending on the 27th.

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  • Anonymous

    Using Google’s mantra, “give it away and they will buy”!

    • Bringit

      Or – make iPads.

      • http://www.grifiti.com Tin Hoang

        they do make iPads.  Parts of it anyway.

      • Bringit

        Copy them too.

      • Anonymous

        @bringit the ipad copied one of hps tablets in terms of all specs except OS.
        The ipad 2 copied the xoom’s specs, from the processor to the dual cameras.

      • serpentor

        @c009b00976ca25649d53f2a08121b9f1:disqus If by Copy you mean you have to shoop the Tab to look like an iPad, yes

      • http://www.grifiti.com Tin Hoang

        They did copy Apple.  And fighting a copyright lawsuit at the moment.

  • Anonymous

    HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! now I see the reason for the quotations around the word sell. Anything to pad their abysmal sell thru numbers and the 40%+ return rate. Samsung will be dead in two years.  true story™©®

    • http://www.grifiti.com Tin Hoang

      I seriously doubt Samsung will be dead in 2 years.  Their tablet might be dead though, at least it will be if they continue to try to go head to head against the iPad.

      • Anonymous

        the 10.1 is twice the tablet the ipad will ever be. And thinner. True Story Scroatum. 

      • http://www.grifiti.com Tin Hoang

        I’m sure it’s a better tablet.  No argument from me on that point.  Technically, almost every one is putting out a better spec’d item then Apple.  I’m no bus dev guy, but all the other tablet’s current business models don’t seem to be working. 

    • http://twitter.com/GRZLA Grizzly Atoms

      40% return rate story was a bust and even BGR admitted that. If Samsung is gone in 2 years then good luck getting those iPhone/iPad parts. You are a genius.

  • Anonymous

    Wow.  Now Sammy is gonna GIVE AWAY their tablets?  WTF.  Even HP didn’t stoop that low.

    • Dfgs

      Free iPod touch back to school offer…remember?

      • Michael Scrip

        That’s an incentive to buy a Mac… not to clear out inventory.

        The iPod Touch certainly sells well on its own.

      • KCRic

        So you’re sure this isn’t an incentive to buy a Samsung TV or something else made by them? 

        Oh when it’s Apple doing it they’re not trying to clear inventory. I see…..

      • Michael Scrip

        @dd93db1ceb018c02c4af53c3a4293d2c:disqus 

        I didn’t realize HDTVs were hard to sell… 

        Why would Samsung be “giving away” a $500 Galaxy Tab?  They are only a few months old… wouldn’t they rather sell them at full price?  

        When Apple had their “back-to-school” deal… the iPods were almost a year old… and nowhere near $500…

    • bgs

      They are not giving it away. You have to purchase a 3d tv for $1500.  Big companies will never give anything away. Remember that…

    • http://twitter.com/GRZLA Grizzly Atoms

      Free tablet for buying a $1,500 TV? Thats 3 iPads.

    • Anonymous

      When the iPod touch was new apple was giving it away with a laptop purchase, so why is this so bad?

    • Steve Lee

      They are not giving it away…. people like you may think they are giving it away and that the catch lol
      Its a combo deal

    • http://profiles.google.com/brotherkane Brian Kane

      This speaks to the poor performance of their 3D TVs more than their tablet.  I am a devoted iPad user and I’ll admit the Galaxy tab is the bomb (best non-Apple Tablet). 

  • Satya Chowdary

    Zach is living proof for the saying “Apple fanboys are sadists”. Here is Zach using something hp has given up to criticize Samsung’s honeycomb tablet.

    Next blog from Zach could be like “my momma couldn’t pee coz Android sucks”

  • Anonymous

    The profit margin HP has for laptops is to low, but I guess it would better then throwing the TouchPads away…

    • serpentor

      True, they already spent the $$$ making them, might as well use it as a promotion.

  • http://twitter.com/Synergi Synergi

    I don’t think it matters.. once Amazon’s tablet comes out, that’s the end for other Android tablet makers.

    • http://www.grifiti.com Tin Hoang

      Looking forward to the Amazon tablet.  I’m sure it’s the only tablet Apple’s truly concerned about in the current crop of competition against the iPad.

    • http://twitter.com/GRZLA Grizzly Atoms

      Amazon’s tablet won’t run honeycomb. It will run a bare bones system like the Nook Color does and will not have a camera.

      PASS!

    • http://www.letstalktablets.com letstalktablets

      I’m personally looking very forward to when Amazon releases their line of tablets!! I believe they will be game changers for sure.

  • Charles Clout

    I suppose the free iPod touch “back to school” offer Apple did was just as scrutinised back in the day?”

    No? Shame.

    • Anonymous

      There’s nothing wrong with giving away free tech or having big discounts for that matter. Not recognizing that this is why Android is growing so fast is silly, which a lot of Android fans seem to not acknowledge, yet at the same time use marketshare as “proof” of Android’s dominance.

      • Charles Clout

        This article seems to have bugger all to do with Android marketshare or growth. Can you show me where I missed those points of information?

        It does seem to contain a sarcastic view with regards to an offer on a $1500 TV tho.

      • Anonymous

        Sorry, I wasn’t fully awake and was letting my random thoughts get the better of me.

      • http://twitter.com/GRZLA Grizzly Atoms

        So let me get this straight. The only reason Android is doing well is because of free phones? Then how are OEM’s making money and still using Android as their smartphone OS?

      • Anonymous

        Last quarter LG and motorola lost money in mobile.  true story ™©®

      • Anonymous

        Didn’t say it’s the only reason, but it definitely plays a large part. OEMs aren’t setting carrier pricing either, so they are still making money, but not a whole lot considering the ~600k/day activations.

    • Bigmike

      Great point! I didn’t see any responses…lol

  • Anonymous

    Wow those galaxy tabs must be very popular. Giving away with a tv. Very nice

    • serpentor

      I think the finer point is that it’s a $1500 tv.

  • Anonymous

    What killed WebOS was the crazy and awful hardware design team. Everything was looking good until they had to make the freggin TouchPad look like a big Palm Pre. It’s like these idiots didn’t learn anything from the Pre disaster, they all deserve to be beaten and fired.

    Well HP did give a bunch of people coffee to try out the Veer lol, it’s on YouTube.

  • KenG

    “The decision to axe webOS certainly wasn’t made lightly”?
    Yes, it was, and in haste.  Two months is not enough time to judge the success of a horribly mis-priced and poorly marketed new product.  Apotheker wanted to kill WebOS, and he wasted no time.

    • serpentor

      Here’s hoping whoever buys their hardware biz also scoops up webOS and actually does something with it.

  • Anonymous

    The Galaxy Tab 10.1 was listed on eBay for ~$80 off this week.

    Between the give aways, the discounts and Samsung not releasing sales figures, the sales must suck.

  • Kyopoboy

    This has more to do with BBY trying to unload those crappy 3D TVs that no one wants/needs.

  • Anonymous

    I like those girls.

  • Anonymous

    This deal might make the galaxy tab pretty popular on eBay while people try to resale them and grab iPad2s. I like the galaxy tab the lack of apps only makes it good for web browsing at the moment.

    • Booboolala2000

      Which is not a bad thing. I like using my xoom for browsing the web. Mostly what I do anyway on my phone. The news apps are nice but even in the ipad you are looking at tablet apps 1.0 . Plus lot if thise apostle will be browser based or internet based in a couple of years anyway. Apps are nice but they donte make a tablet great.

      • Anonymous

        You clearly haven’t used (many) iPad apps. Try Garageband or iMovie sometime and compare it to what’s available on Android Tablets.

      • Anonymous

        I was about to say the same thing.

      • Anonymous

        Android has a movie editing app on there as well.
        Garageband is shit on my friends ipad, it just isn’t as good as the one for a real mac.

  • Lawrence of Arabia

    They are trying to get rid of the TVs not the tablets.

  • Booboolala2000

    Sweet deal if you were in the market for either or both. Almost made me wanna go buy a tv, and I already have a great tv and a xoom.

  • Anonymous

    Sorry, I don’t want a Touchpad even for free unless I can hack another OS onto it. The hardware is acceptable, and WebOS had some nice ideas, but it’d just be another (large) minimally useful gadget laying around.

    • Anonymous

      If all else fails, you could always just watch the pre-loaded DemoWare video; it seems to run flawlessly and shows you what you could hypothetically do on it -
      True Story™®©

  • LDMartin1959

    If you have to give it away to get people to use it, t is a failed product

    • Bob

      No one got in a pissy when Sammy was giving away Blu-Ray players with 3D TVs for Christmas, this is no different.

      The profit margin on the TV alone is more than enough to make up for the hit taken on the Tab.  This is more about selling off the TVs collecting dust.

      • LDMartin1959

        It’s not really the same. Blu-Ray players are established products and Samsung Blu-Ray players were a somewhat successful product. They wanted to sell 3D tvs and the best way to get people to jump in is to give them a player to use it with. More important, they are symbiotic products. The Galaxy is not an successful product. In the case of the Galaxy and the TV, sorry, no symbiosis there. It’s inclusion is simply a way for Samsung to try to get the product into peoples hands and hope that they can convince their friends that it was worth the price they paid for it.

  • http://slyck.com/ zbeast

    The trouble with the hp pad is that it has an os that one one can use..
    Even if it was given away… you still could not use it.. No one write’s for WebOS.
    No one is going to write for WebOS.  It’s IOS, Android, or Windows 7-8. 
    If your not there your square. Why would this be so hard to understand?

    It takes time and money to program for a give os.  Even if the tool’s are given away for free.
    you still hope to have something you can sell when you done.
    People don’t program for these devices for free.  

    The WebOS market is so small as to be invisible.  I think webOS devices sell real well at the
    quantum level, they are real popular with quarks.. but here in the real world no one cares.

  • Racer416

    I wouldn’t buy them for a dollar. They don’t even work properly…

    • Anonymous

      tried one?

  • https://sites.google.com/site/barry99705/ barry99705

    Forget the tablets, tell me about that curved screen behind them!

  • Charlie Logan

    I knida feel bad for the suckers that bout an HP tablet right before the announcement.

  • Anonymous

    You also forgot to mention the Galaxy Tab is the same price with Ipad 2 499$ for 16GB the only tablet that can compete with the Ipad.

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