Edible Apple

In late May, HP’s Matt Cador made a bold prediction: Just how HP became the top selling PC manufacturer, the storied tech company would also become the number one tablet manufacturer.

Now, nearly three months later, HP has officially killed its HP TouchPad – not to mention all of its WebOS based mobile devices – and is contemplating spinning off its PC business.

Poor sales, always an easy culprit to spot, was behind HP delivering its bombshell news announcement last week as the company attempts to regroup and become more focused on software/enterprise sales than low margin hardware sales.

Highlighting just how bad HP TouchPad sales were, Best Buy had reportedly purchased 270,000 units and had only sold 25,000 to consumers. That’s less than 10% and a helluva lot of inventory for Best Buy to be sitting on. Indeed, the situation was so drastic that Best Buy told HP flat out that it was not going to pay for idle inventory. A few days later, the HP TouchPad was yet another would-be iPod/iPhone/iPad killer that bit the dust.

But one company’s misery is another man’s deal of the week

In the wake of the passing of the TouchPad, HP has begun liquidating the device at insanely low prices. We’re talking $99 for the 16GB model and $149 for the 32GB model. That’s a $400 price cut from when the devices first debuted – and yes, the TouchPad may not have a large app library, but come on, that’s an incredible deal worth exploring if you’re looking for a throwaway tablet that, you know, doesn’t run a lot of apps.

The discounts are expected to hit retailers such as Walmart this Sunday. Get em’ while they’re hot, folks. Note, however, that Best Buy US has reportedly opted to ship its bountiful inventory back to HP while Best Buy Canada has already instituted the aforementioned price cut.

This past Thursday, HP announced that they’d be taking a $400 write off on each TouchPad unit which translates to a write off of $100 million.

via Pre Central