Best Buy Not Getting Any More TouchPads [Best Buy Employee Sets The Record Straight, No More HP webOS Tablets For The Big Electronics Retailer]

Posted on TFTS by Kevin Schram on Sunday, 28. August 2011 under: PCs, Notebooks, Netbooks & Tablets

HP and their retail partners jettisoned their stock of HP TouchPad tablets last weekend, setting the price to $99 and watching them evaporate off store shelves. Earlier today, it was rumored by numerous tech blogs (including us) that Best Buy would be getting another shipment of TouchPad tablets. That rumor spread through the tech blog circuit like wildfire, but unfortunately, it’s not true.

Gawker Media’s Gizmodo is reporting that Best Buy stores have already received their last shipment of TouchPads from HP. They cite employee Robert Lopez, who says that Best Buys around the country received their final shipment of the coveted tablets on either August 24 or August 25. Your local store should have used a ticketing “first come first serve” system to make sure that everybody gets one (who got there early enough).

Looks like that will be the end of the TouchPad. HP has announced their bailing out of the webOS business, and they’ve cut off production, so no more TouchPads rolling into a local tech store near you. The firesale was extremely popular, with the HP TouchPad even outselling the iPad 2 during that weekend when the tablets where $99 and $149.

Since so many people have gotten their hands on the TouchPad, there’s been a lot of questions about webOS’ ecosystem possibly getting an injection of developer attention with all the new masses of people out there with TouchPads. Don’t know about that, but the popularity of the TouchPad firesale shows that folks are willing to buy a non-iPad tablet, it just has to be really cheap.

UPDATE: See HP Offers TouchPad Availability & General Status Update.

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