Best Buy has over 200,000 unsold TouchPads

Summary: Unhappy with sales, Best Buy wants HP to take unsold TouchPad tablets back.

By Adrian Kingsley-Hughes for Hardware 2.0 | August 17, 2011 -- 07:00 GMT (00:00 PDT)

Best Buy has a stock of over 200,000 unsold HP TouchPads, and according to AllThingsD, and wants HP to take them off their hands.

The story goes that Best Buy took in some 270,000 TouchPad tablets, but despite deep discounts now amounting to $100, the big chain retailer can't seem to shift them. Not wanting to end up lumbered with tablets it can't shift, Best Buy has asked HP to take them back.

But there's more to the story. HP is so worried by this development that rumor has it that it is getting ready to send executive VP Todd Bradley to Best Buy HQ to ask the retailer for more time to get sales back on track.

HP's handling of the TouchPad has been far from smooth. Within days of the release of the WiFi version, the company announced that a faster version featuring '4G' was on the way, then the company messed about with the pricing, making it cheaper than Apple's iPad.

All this points to things not being well with the TouchPad.

Let me remind you that this report is based on rumors and whispers and that there's no official word from HP or Best Buy, but it's also a safe bet that the TouchPad launch hasn't been plain sailing given feedback from the industry and owners.

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28 comments

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RE: Best Buy has over 200,000 unsold TouchPads

I have to say, WebOS isn't the greatest. It was hard for me to flip those damn cards around.

The one and only, Cylon Centurion
17 August, 2011 07:27

Reply Vote
RE: Best Buy has over 200,000 unsold TouchPads

So, I'm calling BS just based on the numbers alone: 270,000 units / 1500 stores = 180 units per store. Does that seem reasonable to you? Now, if they sold 25,000 units / 1500 stores, that equals 16.7 units per store average, which seems to be more inline with what they actually seemed to of had from all the reports I've read about (my local store included). Heck, double that to say 35 units per store, and that's 53,500 sold by Best Buy. So how about some of you investigative media types do some fact finding... what gives here? Was Best Buy just warehousing these things?

prdmarican
17 August, 2011 07:30

Reply Vote
- RE: Best Buy has over 200,000 unsold TouchPads
 
 @prdmarican During July 4th launch, I was told by my local Best Buy they had about 16 units per store. However that does not account for their regional warehouses/distribution centers.
 
 jperlow
 17 August, 2011 08:33
 
 Reply Vote
- If HP wanted to have big scale launch, then this inventory is not big at
 
 @prdmarican: all. Best Buy' iPad inventory probably much bigger considering the amount in which this tablet sells.
 
 DDERSSS
 17 August, 2011 08:56
 
 Reply Vote
 - For iPhone 5 launch, Apple will have *millions* units shiped to sellers as
 
 @DeRSSS: ... initial inventory.
 
 The difference with HP TouchPad is that this device does not really sell, so inventory is stuck.
 
 DDERSSS
 17 August, 2011 08:59
 
 Reply Vote
- Seriously??
 
 @prdmarican
 Of course they're warehousing them. They wouldn't send all 180 units, all at once, to each store. Individual stores don't have a lot of room for excess stock, and they also need to be able to adapt to local sales. You can't divvy up the entire stock equally among every store, because some are going to sell more units, and some will sell less.
 
 You're right that an individual store would only have 10-15 in stock at any given time, but do you seriously think that over the course of six months or a year, they'd only get 16 units total? Of course not.
 
 The expectation in those numbers is that each store, on average, might sell 12-14 units per month - thus 180 units per store, per year.
 
 moviedemon
 17 August, 2011 09:34
 
 Reply Vote
RE: Best Buy has over 200,000 unsold TouchPads

Maybe people are wising up to the fact that HP often abandons users by not providing driver updates for newer Operating Systems, and they don't want to be stuck with an expensive coaster when a new OS comes out.

TsarNikky
17 August, 2011 08:02

Reply Vote
- RE: Best Buy has over 200,000 unsold TouchPads
  
  @TsarNikky
  
  Sony are even worse.
  
  Alan Smithie
  17 August, 2011 10:06
  
  Reply Vote
Wow what a shocker! No one wanted a webOS Palm and then

surprise surprise no one wants a webOS tblet either. But better that they didnt sell than got returned, they probably have a few thousand of those still to come back. What kind of idiot at Best Buy ever thought this was going to turn out otherwise? Note to Best Buy, don't think about selling RIM playbooks, xoom's, or any other android tablets. Wait until the Win8 tablets come out next spring. Note to HP, drop this crap and bring out some sweet Win8 tablets. Dont be stupid and throw good money after bad by not being able to admit this webOS fiasco was a crap idea...

Johnny Vegas
17 August, 2011 08:18

Reply Vote
RE: Best Buy has over 200,000 unsold TouchPads

Add another to the parade of failed tablets. It's kind of fascinating to watch.

Johanna232
17 August, 2011 08:33

Reply Vote
How to alienate your fans in ONE easy step

I think they screwed up their potential customer base when they left WebOS 1.0 adopters with no meaningful updates to a very buggy OS. A lot of them (myself included) bought into the first generation on the premise that there would be a reasonable series of updates (in the way that, for example, Android devices are afforded). They burned the bridge that might have led their legacy customers to the new devices. Nice job HP. Personally, all I wanted was native voice recognition - was that too much to ask? Apparently. I'm just waiting for my contract to expire.... then they've lost me too.

DaveBeal
17 August, 2011 08:46

Reply Vote
RE: Best Buy has over 200,000 unsold TouchPads

I'll take one off their hands for $50. Tablets just aren't the big seller that everyone wants to believe, and they are overpriced thus my $50 offering.

LoverockDavidson_-24231404894599612871915491754222
17 August, 2011 09:47

Reply Vote
- They seem to be for Apple:)
 
 @LoverockDavidson_ Just saying
 
 Pagan jim
 
 James Quinn
 17 August, 2011 10:07
 
 Reply Vote
- RE: Best Buy has over 200,000 unsold TouchPads
 
 @LoverockDavidson_ Don't forget to add on $99 dollars for that OEM of your beloved W7 - now that is overpriced.
 
 Alan Smithie
 17 August, 2011 10:09
 
 Reply Vote
- RE: Best Buy has over 200,000 unsold TouchPads
 
 @LoverockDavidson_ What about the iPad with sales in the millions? On the Android side you have the Xoom and Tab that have been doing fairly well. Tablets are not the fad you seem to believe either.
 
 athynz
 17 August, 2011 10:36
 
 Reply Vote
Apple Shaped Elephant

HP is another blue-eyed broker for China's plasticware. I'll risk sounding like a xenophobe since no one else is prepared to. All the OEMs let their brains atrophy while they "recommended" Windows. Now they have to pick up the dregs of a few ex-Apple employees via Palm after Microsoft (surprise!) betrays it's partners by being inexorably slow and second rate.

The irony? ZDNet's peanut gallery chanting "Apple is a hardware company" for a decade. Open architecture was the great white hope and a generation of computer repairmen established careers in the warm embrace of a monopoly.

So now a whole new generation of Apple mimicry has begun. It's like the 80's all over again. The old monopolistic strategies are back. Asian interests disguised as American companies play the platform card? again. Are they kidding? Well folks this is what Vegas is for. You just bulldoze the tacky foreclosed suburbs and bury those tablets in the expanding desert. The debt may be harder to hide.

The US can no longer afford the credit it gives itself. Financially or otherwise. The model for an American company has been there for ages. No one applied it. They just try it on and posed. You might now know that this model's profit is held in North American coffers. It is arguably the worlds most successful company. They are eclipsing energy interests. You might now recognize them as something more than a hardware company. You might further recognize that HP is actually the hardware company, as is Dell, and Levono, and Sony. The greater irony? Of all the computer companies that have ever plied their trade, there was in fact, only one. Every OEM has fronted overseas motherboards and extruded plastic. Their "genius and creativity" has been supply chain efficiencies and instruction manuals printed in english. They might as well have been couriers.

Ed Bott would have you believe that iPhone and iPad are not computers. It helps him reconcile the sea change in fortune. Sadly, around here, advocates for technology are outnumbered by advocates for false economies. With ZDNet, as with open architecture, you got exactly what you paid for... an OS "recommendation", and a stake in a prosperous China.

norgate
17 August, 2011 10:14

Reply Vote
- RE: Best Buy has over 200,000 unsold TouchPads
  
  @norgate Uhm....you ARE aware your beloved Apple junk is also manufactured in China, aren't you?
  
  bigsibling
  17 August, 2011 10:52
  
  Reply Vote
  - Sure but Apple sets the quality mark not
    
    @bigsibling .. The maker. And if they don't do a good enough job Apple will take their business elsewhere and since Apple is doing so very well no one wants to loose that volume of business so they tow the line.
    
    Pagan jim
    
    James Quinn
    17 August, 2011 11:35
    
    Reply Vote
  - Thanks, yes I am
    
    @bigsibling
    
    Whether it is junk or not is a separate argument. I'd be happy to win it separately. The fact is it sells. Based on 22 fake Apple stores in one Chinese province, it sells in China as well. It contains a handsome profit margin which, to the largest extent, comes back to North America. It is understood that the actual product being sold, is intellectual property, and not a manufactured commodity. It is the same IP that OEMs are fundamentally bankrupt of. Microsoft sold the America down the river by becoming software's gatekeepers. They assembled the OEMs under a non compete clause, had them compete with each other to broker Chinese parts. OEMs remained software ignorant.
    
    Look at the average OEM negotiating position relative to Apple. IBM was the smartest and sold early to Levono. The rest are now in line to be acquired (if they are even worth it). It may occur to the ZDNet faithful, after Dell is acquired by an Asian firm, that they had backed the wrong horse. Perhaps not until then. However, Chinese Dell won't succeed in America any better than an American Dell. The error of codependency extends to China.
    
    What you consider junk, is a the single brightest hope for American enterprise for the next 30 years. Their model is exemplary. What exactly are America's products for the next half century. You tell me. Cars? Pharmaceuticals? Natural Gas? Vanity?
    
    norgate
    17 August, 2011 12:42
    
    Reply Vote
Another one bites the dust...

And another one gone...

RIM which only allowed email if you had a Blackberry - bye.
WebOS which was a royal screwing to customers and developers alike -bye.

Who's Next?

MACPCAssist
17 August, 2011 22:00

Reply Vote