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"Unsustainable" would be selling below cost.
There is a market for premium ($500+) devices that is currently dominated by Apple, ASUS (Transformer) and Samsung (Galaxy Tab). This market is mostly unaffected by the competition in the low-cost sector.
The Chinese white-box manufacturers are active in the market of sub-$150 devices, HP is unable to compete there and wisely does not even try.
But between these price points, there is a large market where HP can compete today, even if the margins are low. This market is just for shipping devices in volume. Once they are present in that market and have a brand, then they can start selling premium devices with the margins. Margins on premium devices will not go away as observed above.




Member since:
2005-11-29
There's cheap, and then there's unsustainable. It is fine for HP to have a low to mid range portfolio, but when low range means sub $200 it starts to get a little ridiculous. The price erosion going on is not likely healthy for anybody.
Its probably why Apple isn't participating, they decided they'd rather still make healthy margins on the iPad Mini rather than go dirt cheap.
Prices in this case are sticky-up and it will prove very difficult for HP and others to at some point in the future start extracting healthy margins.