Touchpad firesale

On the 18th of August, there were 609,141 monthly active users of the WebOS Facebook app. That number had been declining very slightly, down from 615k on the 1st of August. 

Today there are 731,005. It looks like HP’s $99 firesale has had some effect. 

How many sales does 120k uplift in MAU equate to? iPhone, Android and RIM all have about 50% Facebook app penetration of their installed bases. Of course, not everyone buying a Touchpad or Pre will use the Facebook client - but the client is very deeply integrated into the OS, and if you’ve just bought one wouldn’t you at least have a look? 

So, based on some highly unscientific numbers, it looks like HP has sold maybe 2-300k Touchpads in the last 10 days. Or alternatively, a larger number has been sold but the buyers aren’t using apps. Either way, since this was all that was in channel it doesn’t tell us a huge amount about broader demand - maybe they could have sold more, maybe not. You can probably sell 50-100k of ANY cool gadget. 

But for comparison, Apple sold 226k iPads every single day of the June quarter. 

Plus, a lot of people now have a view of the window.