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No-one's making jokes now, and the only way that the current crop of Pads that aren't iPads are going to get 'unsanitary' status is if they sit on store shelves without selling.
Thus HP has cut prices in the US, and now Australia, by $100 from both the 16GB and 32GB models.
For Australians, this means the 16GB Wi-Fi will now retail from August 15 at Harvey Norman stores for AUD $499, and the 32GB model for $599.
The Australian prices now undercut iPad pricing, although JB Hi-Fi does have Acer's Iconia 16GB Android tablet at AUD $488, and Toshiba's 16GB Android model for $493.
US customers will pay only US $399 and $499 respectively, making US pricing more competitive, too.
Clearly, HP is doing this to ensure its TouchPad is a success, but cutting prices alone is not always enough to ensure success - especially in today's ever more crowded tablet market - with tablets from several major players such as Sony, Amazon, LG, HTC and others still yet to hit the market.
1. Make sure your TouchPad salespeople, be it in Harvey Norman, Staples, JB Hi-Fi, Best Buy or wherever, are very well trained, so they're experts on how the TouchPad works.
The salespeople need to be able to competently and smoothly:
- demonstrate the TouchPad's features and benefits
- show how it accomplishes various tasks more smoothly and efficiently than on either iOS or Android Honeycomb
- let people hear how it sounds better through Beats by Dr. Dre technology
- see how its browsing experience is enhanced via compatibility with Flash
- show how multitasking is more natural to access and more fluid to switch through
- see Skype video calling in action
- see the advantage of the 'Just Type' bar in action
- see how all your information is easily kept in sync and is easily accessible online
- play pre-loaded free and paid games, from Angry Birds to whatever else best showcases the TouchPad's gaming capabilities
- show the benefits of the wireless charging pad, and the benefits to owning more than one even though they're optional extras
- show end users how easy it is to print stuff when connected to an HP printer
- and do all the other things you can do with a tablet, from listening to, watching or reading digital media, organising yourself through the calendar, connecting via email or other social networking services, organising your photos and videos and sharing some as desired and more.
The iPad has gone a long way to showing people that today's tablets can genuinely perform and deliver on a range of computing tasks that were once strictly relegated to the traditional computer.
HP's TouchPad can do all of this too, but HP needs to more actively show and promote this wherever possible. It has a nice video showing some of this stuff, but I don't think a video's enough... do you?
More ideas on page two, please read on!
Maybe HP needs to contact a few TV and movie production companies and offer its technologies for use as props and 'product placement' just like Apple does, something that has resulted in plenty of free TV show and movie promotion for the crunchy company - even more so when the art director seeks to have Apple's logo obscured in some manner - it only draws more attention for some.
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Maybe HP needs to make a similar offer to anyone that buys a brand new HP printer too.
After all, if Amazon ends up releasing a tablet at a 'loss leader' price in the hope of making up profit via sales of apps, music, movies, TV shows, books and more, why not HP in these early stages, too?
HP has the cash cow of ink to nurture, with the webOS platform inevitably to come directly to higher-end HP printers in some form, and if TouchPad can make profits through app stores, and sales of digital media as Amazon envisions, and help sell ever more printer ink despite being a portable piece of paper, or sorts, as is any tablet, then do it, HP.
The window of opportunity for true success is not very large. HP has deep pockets but its TouchPad is not as 'must have' an as Xbox 360 or an iPad, no matter what the CEO of HP wishes it to be. There's no easy path to 'must have' status - only hard work and clever, inspired thinking.
3. Let people know what new apps have become available for the HP TouchPad - make some noise about it - and go after developer support as aggressively as possible, because all your competitors are doing the same. It's all about the apps.
In Australia, journalists with review model HP TouchPads only get access to an Australian TouchPad app store with free apps, although an HP spokesperson has informed me that paid apps are coming to the TouchPad's store once it launches officially on August 15.
Concluded on page three, please read on!
4. Widen the distribution network as quickly as possible. At the TouchPad's Australian media launch, HP's people said they wanted the TouchPad on sale wherever resellers already sold HP gear around Australia, although Harvey Norman had an exclusive period.
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5. Have a competition. Huawei was recently doing a treasure hunt in Sydney and Melbourne - how about HP do something similar, not only in the capital cities, but say in Alice Springs or other unlikely locations?
Get some local buzz happening in local areas'¦ make it a real event'¦ do something special'¦ and create some real attention for the TouchPad.
You could even donate some to special places like to the kids at Ronald McDonald House, and make sure they're pre-loaded with all the best free and paid games currently available on the platform for those special needs kids, while giving them and their parents an easy way to communicate and stay in touch with the rest of the world while they're there.
6. Work as hard as you can to deliver consistent, tested, quality OS updates to deliver the best and smoothest performance, to eke out every processing cycle out of the TouchPad's 1.2GHz dual-core processor, to bring new features and more to ensure TouchPad users enjoy the same kind of experience improvements that Apple delivers when it introduces new versions of its iOS operating system.
People really don't like waiting for OS updates, and while OS 3.0.2 has been an improvement, TouchPad users are no doubt waiting for a 3.1 OS update to come, let alone any future 3.2, 3.3 or 4.0.
Anyway, these are just some ideas. They'll cost money to implement, and would need someone with vision, initiative and guts to implement for the marketing stuff, both here and in the US, but it can be done, and if you take advantage of social media, can be done smartly and efficiently, too.
Over to you, HP, and time to set off some real fireworks - especially while your competitors are tangled up in lawsuits with Apple, and you still aren't!
