[lucasjake]

Pricing them at $99 with the current inventory amounts to almost a hundred million dollars in what would have been losses to establish a beachhead.

Except, there is no beachhead to be established here. Its not like the kindle because HP has no track record in selling media like Amazon, and its not like the iPad because they don't have the vertical integration like apple does, and its not like android because they don't have the massive advertising business to 'justify it.'

The only way to justify this was to stick it out long term and build a profitable product, and they chose not to. I still think it may have been a big mistake, but $99 bucks isn't a strategy.

[MatthewPhillips]

It would be much more loss than that. The components alone cost over $200 more than that price. I'm sure HP is willingly swallowing 500+ million in losses to get out of the consumer computing business.