HP TouchPad Sale Expected to Begin Again, Possibly Soon

The $99 HP TouchPad sale is expected to begin again, according to the Hewlett-Packard Co., which says it will release one last run of TouchPads to meet unfulfilled demand.

We don't know exactly when these units will be available or how many we'll get, and we can't promise we'll have enough for everyone, an HP representative wrote on the company blog, The Next Bench.

However, HP said the company will be manufacturing the tablet devices during their fourth fiscal quarter, which ends Oct. 31, with another fire sale to follow.

Just six weeks after its release in August, HP announced it would discontinue the TouchPad due to disappointing sales and customer complaints about the software's speed.

The original HP TouchPad discontinuation sale, which began Aug. 20, sent the tablets flying off the shelves of retailers across the country. During the sale, HP dropped the 16GB model's price to $99 from the original $500 and the 32GB model's price to $149 from the original $600. TouchPads sold out during their initial sale, sparking hype in the tablet market and prompting HP to manufacture more.

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, the HP rep wrote on the company blog.

The fire sale was part of an effort to clear out stockpiled inventory, but since has undermined competing tablet devices, though that was not HP's intention.

Much to consumers' dismay, HP will leave the pricing decisions this time around to retailers, some of which won't drop the prices of the TouchPad units to $99 or $149.

Each retailer will manage their own policy and process regarding pricing and price matching, the HP rep wrote. Please contact the local retailer of your choice to see what their current position is.

Retailers like Best Buy and Wal-Mart that initially sold the TouchPads at the heavily discounted prices will be able to price the tablets at their own discretion, and not necessarily at the prices suggested by HP.

The best way to keep up-to-date about the next TouchPad sale is to sign up for an alert on HP's Web site to be notified when more are in stock and the sale will officially begin.