Walking Dead: HP Builds More TouchPads

Hewlett-Packard may have killed the TouchPad, but it’s going to continue manufacturing it for just a little while longer.

With demand for the heavily discounted tablet still running high, HP has decided to produce one one last run before sending it off to a final dirt nap. “HP will be manufacturing a limited quantity of TouchPads with webOS during our fourth fiscal quarter 2011, which ends October 31,” the company said in an update posted to its Next Bench Blog.

And why not? Presumably, HP’s upstream suppliers are unhappily sitting atop big piles of component inventory. What would HP do with it otherwise? If the demand is there and the inventory is prepped and paid for, why not produce another run — especially if the company intends to continue to update webOS.

So even in death, the Touchpad lives on thanks to that $99 price point which seems to have ginned up the consumer interest that the $499 device could not.