HP Drops Price of Touchpad Permanently

After cutting the price of its tablet for one weekend only, Hewlett Packard has decided to make the price cuts for its Touchpad tablet permanent.

Originally, HP announced its 16GB and 32GB touchpad tablets -- originally priced at $499 and $599 respectively -- were both $100 off for this past weekend. The price cut was part of a weekend promotion and was supposed to end Sunday.

It apparently worked so well, however, that the company decided to make it permanent. HP hasn't made a big deal about the permanent price cut, with no press release or marketing material noticeable, but a representative confirmed that it is real. Several consumers first noticed the price cut on HP's Web site.

In addition to the permanent price cut, HP is offering a $50 app credit for early adopters. So if you're a consumer that bought the Touchpad for its original price, HP will give you half back in the form of apps.

There are other deals for the Touchpad that can also be added on top of this one. One deal for students is $50 off the asking price, to total it at $350. Another deal is for $40 off for all consumers, to total it at $360.The coupon code for both is Save30HP.

The permanent price cut could be an admission from HP that the original price was a little too high. The tablet came out in late June to mixed reviews, and the price held off most consumers. Tech analysts are projecting the company has not done well in selling the tablet. HP hasn't released sales numbers yet, but if it has done anything like the other iPad competitors, that's not a good sign.

A recent report from Motorola indicated the company shipped a mere 440,000 Xoom tablets over the past three months. The number of tablets actually sold could be even worse. What makes this whole picture worse for HP is the fact that Motorola cut the price of the Xoom too but didn't even wait this early. Samsung refuses to release sales numbers for the Galaxy tab, but an exec recently revealed the company shipped out 2 million.

All of these figures pale in comparison to Apple's numbers for the iPad, which range well into the millions. In the first quarter of this year, Apple sold more than 7 million iPads alone, which triples what the closest competitor has sold to date.

One analyst, Avi Greengart with Current Analysis, is a fan of HP's move to cut the price. He noted how HP launched the TouchPad prematurely -- it was extremely buggy -- and paid dearly for that with terrible reviews.

"The price drop is a smart way to bring attention back to the TouchPad now that HP has fixed many of the problems in a software update."

Follow Gabriel Perna on Twitter at @GabrielSPerna