HP has announced its iPad-fighting TouchPad tablet will hit UK stores in July with prices starting at £399.
HP’s first foray into the tablet world was announced in February this year and features the WebOS operating system, acquired as part of its surprise $1.2bn deal for veteran mobile maker Palm back in 2010.
The Wi-Fi version of the TouchPad will be released in the US on July 1st, followed by the UK, Ireland, France and Germany a few days later and Canada in mid-July. A phased rollout will see the tablet released in Australia, Hong Kong, Italy, New Zealand, Singapore and Spain before the end of the year.
Prices will start at £399 for the 16GB version and £479 for the 32GB. Pre-orders will begin June 19th, the company said.
"What makes HP TouchPad a compelling alternative to competing products is webOS," said Jon Rubinstein, senior vice president and general manager, Palm Global Business Unit, HP. "The platform’s unmatched features and flexibility will continue to differentiate HP products from the rest of the market for both personal and professional use. This is only the beginning of what HP’s scale can do with webOS."
HP has some way to go to knock Apple of its perch as the tablet king. At its recent Worldwide Developer Conference Apple announced it had sold 25 million iPad in just 14 months. The release of the iPad 2 has given sales a shot in the arm; up to the end of March it had sold 19.48 million iPads, with a further 5.5 million being shifted between then and its WWDC announcement.
The impressive sales figures has forced Gartner to lower its forecast for global PC unit sales.
