On Wednesday I went to BestBuy to purchase a Nook. I felt that a lot of my time was spent reading digital files and that it was time to make the technology leap. After doing my research and comparing Apple’s Ipad to Barnes and Noble’s Nook to Amazon’s Kindle I decided to go with the Nook. I didn’t want to take the $800 leap to ipad just to read (except for when I’m commuting I am always near a computer) and I wanted to be able to read documents as well as listen to audio classes or watch videos (such as powerpoint presentations). I chose the Nook for this reason.

The next day I went back to BestBuy to purchase one for Darren and stopped over at the Geek Squad desk to ask a few data transfer questions. While I was waiting in line I noticed a sign telling BestBuy customers that HP has decided to discontinue their tablet and that any purchases of their tablet could not be exchanged or refunded. After waiting in line for about 10 minutes another customer joined me, with tablet in hand. When I asked him if it was defective and why he chose that model he told me “No, it’ works great. HP doesn’t have good branding, so they just couldn’t compete on the same scale as the other guys.”

He was there to have the internet connections checked because he accesses it through a proprietary system (he was a techie) and HP’s default settings were too slow. Later, I hopped on the BestBuy website to see how much the HP tablet was listed for, and to my surprise it was only $99 and $149, according to memory. It had great reviews, lots of pros, very few cons, yet it has tanked in the market for less than $99. Branding would have made all the difference!

What other lessons do you see in the HP tablet failure that you can use for your own business? What do you think HP could have done differently?