The HP touchpad liquidation has flooded the net with any kind of comments about the fact that people could be very attracted by cheap tablet prices (even for a death device/OS).
One more time, this fire sale teaches us that if Apple (the undisputed leader of this market) sells the iPad at $499 you have to give more for less to compete! (IMHO)
So far no one did it and the results are pretty visible.
Perhaps, to compete seriously against Apple, tablets vendors should change their sales strategy and learn from other markets such as, for example, the gaming consoles one.
For many years, console manufacturers (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo) sold the hardware at low prices (sometimes the street prices were under the manufacturing costs) and invested heavily in developers to make money in medium/long term basis on games and services sales.
For the reason above, I’m sure Amazon (rumors say they will launch a tablet soon.) Will become a real (maybe the only) competitor to Apple for a few simple reasons:
* It Has a complete ecosystem (including an AppStore),
* It Has the Kindle expertise;
* It Has the ability to sell/rent music and videos (including streaming) at good prices;
* It Already has an infrastructure to give any type of service;
Final note
In short, they could sell the device at a low price (even at manufacturing price or less) aiming to make you spend money on contents.
Any feedback is welcome.
