Best Buy sitting on a pile of unsold HP tablets
There have been plenty of hints that Hewlett-Packard’s TouchPad isn’t selling well. First there was a $50 discount. Then there were spot discounts of $100 at outlets like Costco. Then the $100 discount became permanent. Adding insult to apparent injury, a deal on Woot for $120 off an entry-level 16-GB TouchPad netted all of 612 takers.
With HP set to report quarterly earnings tomorrow, sources familiar with the matter tell AllThingsD that TouchPad sales are failing yet another critical test: sales at big box consumer electronics retailer Best Buy.
According to one source who’s seen internal HP reports, Best Buy has taken delivery of 270,000 TouchPads and has so far managed to sell only 25,000, or less than 10 percent of the units in its inventory.
A second person who has seen Best Buy’s TouchPad sales figures confirmed the results as “consistent with what I’ve seen,” and went so far as to say that 25,000 sold might be “charitable.” This source suggested that the 25,000-unit sales number may not account for units that consumers return to stores for a refund.
Definitely not looking like the next iPad “killer”… I hope HP figures out a way to move these devices - the TouchPad is one of the only non-Android, non-iOS tablets that showed any promise.