What Non-Apple Tablet Makers Can Learn From Sins Past ⇥

Mike Isaac argues that the iPad is the high end of the tablet market, and that the only way for others to compete is with cheap, low-end units:

HP killed the [TouchPad] after a mere 49 days, citing disappointing initial sales figures. In order to liquidate inventory on the massive $3.3 billion write-down the company took on “winding down” its TouchPad business, HP slashed prices to a fraction of what they once were — $100 instead of $500. RIM followed suit recently, cutting prices on the BlackBerry PlayBook nearly in half.

Suddenly, HP and RIM couldn’t keep the tablets in stock. Retail chains sold out almost immediately, while the manufacturers’ online storefronts were on back-order for weeks.

Taking massive write-offs counts as a success? The lesson here is that people bought the tablets because they were cheap, not because they were good. It’s a poor piece of advice for the competitors to flood the market with cheap, poorly-made, slow, incomplete and barely-useable wastes of plastic and metal.