The $99 HP TouchPads that HP put on sale through eBay tonight were gone in 21 minutes. According to the listing on eBay, 2316 were sold. At that rate, they were selling at approximately two per second. However, as reporting appeared to be somewhat delayed, they may have been selling even faster.
The 32 GB version is reported on eBay as available as this story being updated, about 62 minutes into the sale. It is being sold for $149 plus $19 shipping. eBay and HP are not saying how many are available, but at this point just over 8300 have been sold in three separate ebay listings. That number has remained static for the last 10 minutes or so… it may be that’s all they have and the listing just hasn’t gone into the ‘sold out’ status yet.
The HP TouchPad is the discontinued tablet that has been repeatedly put on sale in one manner or another for $99 since August 20. Originally priced at $499 (16GB model) and $599 (32GB model), sales of the tablet were sluggish at full price.
Once second fastest selling tablet during the first 10 months of this year. Though discontinued, HP completed another manufacturing run, and those tablets became available in stores at the firesale prices – but require an additional computer purchase in most cases.
The current sale on eBay was not intended to be available to the public until Monday morning, according to an internal HP note to employees – who were supposed to have first dibs this evening. Nevertheless, word got out and the 16GB models went fast, as expected.
—–update—-
Just over an hour into the sale, the ‘buy’ links for the 32GB versions of the HP Touchpads stopped working. Some time later the pages switched to the ‘item no longer available’ status, indicating they are sold out as well.
