HP Offers $100 Off TouchPad This Weekend

Facebook will slash the price of its 16-gigabyte version to $400 from August 5-7, in hopes of making the device more appealing in comparison to the costlier iPad 2, which starts at $500. The beefier 32-gigabyte TouchPad will stand at full price.

After disappointing sales and lukewarm reviews, HP is suffering from a lack of demand for WebOS products. The chicken-and-egg dilemma -- consumers want products with a wide-ranging app ecosystem, but developers are unwilling to create apps for a platform with limited consumer demand -- is forcing HP to load WebOS on all its products, including its PCs, to speed up adoption.

In addition, the company is considering whether to license WebOS to further spark interest from developers. There are only about 6,000 WebOS apps, with a majority of those optimized for HP's smartphones. Apple has 350,000 and Android comes in second with 20,000.

Regardless, consumers may snap up a few extra TouchPads over the weekend, but the bigger problem looms. In July, the company reorganized its WebOS team, just days after the launch of the TouchPad, in an effort to spur growth in the struggling platform.

The TouchPad boasts a 1.2-gigahertz dual-core processor and a 9.7-inch screen. In addition, it features a 1.3-megapixel front-facing webcam for video calls, as well as 512-megabytes of RAM. While the TouchPad looks to fall short of Apple or Google, increasing sales of the device may further HP's future success and its ability to get developers onboard for WebOS.