HP permanently drops TouchPad’s price by $100

HP’s $100-off-sale this past weekend on the TouchPad tablet was such a success (or perhaps failure) that the company has made the discount permanent, according to its sales page.

“HP continually evaluates pricing for its products and is pleased to permanently extend its back-to-school promotion on the HP TouchPad,” an HP spokesperson told VentureBeat.

The steep discount comes only about a month after its debut, which indicates the webOS-powered tablet is probably not selling very well. It probably didn’t help that the product’s most prominent advertising features lesser-known celebrities (in the U.S.) like British comic Russell Brand and boxer/singer Manny Pacquiao. And then there’s that whole iPad thing, which, combined with a slew of recent Android-based tablets, makes it an especially challenging time to launch a new tablet.

The TouchPad 16GB version is now selling for $399 while the 32GB version sells for $499. Knocking $100 off the price of the base unit means the tablet undercuts the market leader, Apple’s iPad, which starts at $499 and goes all the way up to $829. HP is clearly hoping consumers will choose the cheaper tablet over the better-known one.

Although it isn’t as well-known, that doesn’t mean the TouchPad doesn’t have decent specs and interesting features. The 9.7-inch TouchPad features a dual-core 1.2-GHz Snapdragon processor and a front-facing camera for video conferencing. It also runs the very cool WebOS, which puts Apple’s iOS on the iPad 2 to shame when it comes to multitasking.

Does the $100 price drop make you more interested in the TouchPad?