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How to make a $100 tablet: discontinue the product. Photo by Robert Scoble

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Bit of an impulse purchase, but I just ordered an HP TouchPad Tablet from Barnes and Noble. Why? Because HP is ditching the product and selling it for about $100. The HP Touchpad runs WebOS (not Android) and gets mediocre reviews, but hell. It’s $100.

Do they ship to Sri Lanka? No, I don’t think so. I only ordered because my sister is coming down from the Etats next month. Barnes and Noble doesn’t bill until the order ships, so I’m not even sure if the order went through for reals, but it seems like it. Kinda makes me hope that more tablets get discontinued.

The $100 Hot Spot

As this fire sale shows, the hot spot for any tablet (or anything) is $100, a price which is still well below the actual cost. Of course, it’s really hard to make a great tablet for that price, unless the parent company makes some tectonic shift and decides to basically give them away. Here’s a review of a $100 Android tablet on sale at Walgreens:

The truth of the matter is that the M-150 is so painful to use that you’ll rarely find yourself looking forward to using it (not to mention that it feels cheap, flimsy, and barely lasts longer than a drunken fratboy in bed). Why would you do that to yourself? (Ars Technica)

This, however, doesn’t mean that a cheap tablet is impossible. Many Indian companies have gotten into the tablet business, and some have hit the $100 sweet spot.

Lakshmi Access Communications Systems (LACS) is delighted to prove you wrong. The company unveiled a series of tablets on Friday, starting with a 7-incher priced at $99, all running Android (The Next Web)

Is that tablet as janky as the Maylong? Who knows, thing hasn’t yet got many reviews. To up the game, the Indian government looks set to roll out a $35 tablet, though with God knows how much tax payer subsidization of development and final cost.

But I digress. They’re selling an actually good tablet for $100, down from the usual and realistic $500. So, as the first review that pops up says, “just BUY BUY BUY!”. Available at Barnes and Noble. Supplies won’t last.

UPDATE: Barnes And Noble is a bit useless. They don’t know if they have stock or if these orders are even going to be shipped. I’m guessing no.

Hat tip to Rav33n for retweeting Ozetadev‘s notice of the sale.