Let's play a game of spot the link:
1) HP says it is going to discontinue making the TouchPad and slashes the price by £260 for a 16GB model from £349 to £89 and cuts the 32GB model price from £429 to £115 (a reduction of £314!!).
2) HP TouchPad stocks sell out.
The company was guilty of stating the bleeding obvious when it noted in a blog post that "since we announced the price drop, the number of inquiries about the product and the speed at which it disappeared from inventory has been stunning", adding that it was "safe to say we were pleasantly surprised by the response".
Really? You cut the price of your product by almost 75% and you're "pleasantly surprised" when people buy it. Put it this way, if you cut the price of a Ford Focus from £15,995 to £3,998 and lots of people bought it, would you really be surprised?
The problem, of course, is that Ford can't sell the Focus at £3,998 and HP couldn't sell the TouchPad at £89 and £115 if it was a viable product.
The trick which HP didn't manage to achieve was to have a product like the iPad that sells in big numbers even at a price of £399 for the 16GB version and £479 for 32GB.
Because people love cheap stuff
Either the people at HP don't know economics or they are actually using this as a marketing ploy...the cost of manufacturing a HP tablet might be cheaper than stated in media reports or what you actually think.