TouchPad no longer available in Europe!

Yes that’s right, the HP TouchPad is no longer on sale anywhere in Europe, according to HP, and no where else in the world besides the US. After the fire sale got rid of 250,000 units in a matter of hours, HP have seen a resurgance in the interest in the developer community in the ill-fated device. Many critics, myself included wonder what would have happened if HP sold the original TouchPad pre-firesale for maybe £200. Yes they would make a small loss, but they could and would have made the money back from content distribution by HP themselves. This model has succeeded many times before, including products such as the PS3, Xbox and the Kindle, and Microsoft themselves, giving away their first OS to manufacturers to increase usage of the system.

It’s sad to see a good device disappear from sale, even though many worse devices still make lots of money on the market, e.g the unfortunate Acer Iconia Tab.