After demoing it early and making the market wait for a fair bit of time, HP (Palm) has finally confirmed that its 9.7″ tablet ‘TouchPad’ would go on sale from 1st July in US. TouchPad runs webOS which was developed by Palm and went to HP along with Palm’s acquisition last year. TouchPad would be WiFi only to begin with, retailing at $499 for 16GB and $599 for 32GB. HP has assured a AT&T connected version that would launch later this year, given earlier promises it might well be 4G enabled.
A few days after US launch the HP TouchPad would also hit UK, Ireland, France, Germany and Canada (across the globe ‘later this year’). Pre-orders in North America and Europe would begin on 19th June.
The only tablet competitor to Apple’s iOS has been Google’s Android 3.0 (Honeycomb), but given the half baked state of Honeycomb, we are much more optimistic about the TouchPad. HP is in race to catch the 3rd spot in the mobile market and a tablet presence plays an important role here. our friends who have played with prototypes have complained of poor plastic built, we would wait to see the OS experience before giving your judgement!
