Amazon.com taking pre-orders for HP TouchPad 4G, $700
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Amazon.com has begun taking pre-orders for Hewlett-Packard’s HP TouchPad 4G tablet.
According to Amazon’s listing, $700 will get you the 4G-capable tablet with 32 gigabytes of memory built in and no contract with a wireless carrier (although such a data plan would be needed to connect to 4G networks).
The price, listed as $699.99, puts the 4G version of the TouchPad $100 more than Wi-Fi only version of the 32-gigabyte device, which is a pretty standard price bump for tablets and the same increase for Wi-Fi to 3G Apple iPads and other competitors.
Interestingly, HP seems to be playing around with the idea of lowering the price of the Wi-Fi-only TouchPad, which may be an indication of slower-than-anticipated sales so far. HP hasn’t officially cut the price on the TouchPad yet, but it is offering a $50 rebate to early adopters of the TouchPad and also introduced a $50 HP WebOS App Catalog credit to those who bought a TouchPad between its July 1 launch date and Aug. 4.
Aside from being able to connect to 4G cellular networks, from AT&T and possibly wireless providers, the TouchPad 4G is the same as its Wi-Fi-only brother, with a 9.7-inch touchscreen and an iPad-matching 1024-by-768 pixel resolution.
With all that in mind, it’s not unlikely that HP might roll out similar incentives to get the 4G model of its tablet into consumer hands.
HP has a lot riding on WebOS, basically buying the smart-phone maker Palm so it could buy WebOS in a $1.2-billion takeover last year. The consumer electronics giant is also reportedly exploring the possibility of licensing out WebOS to other hardware manufactures in an effort to boost the platform as a rival to Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android, currently the two dominant mobile operating systems.
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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles
Twitter.com/nateog