14 DAY TRIAL // People who thought HP's sudden scrapping of the TouchPad project was mostly harmless because of how little the device lasted might be in for a surprise when they learn just what happened to the ones who were supposed to make said devices.
Many things were said about HP's recent decisions, like the PC spin-off and the acquisition of Autonomy, not to mention the whole TouchPad debacle.
At first glance, the story of the TouchPad tablet could be considered the most ironic, if not downright hilarious.
After all, the latest batch of slates, even though TouchPad was supposed to be dead and gone, shipped loaded with Android and HP doesn't even know why or how that happened.
There is a fairly bleak reality behind this whole story, however, one that Digitimes is reporting on now.
Granted, nothing specific was said about HP's possible link to what happened to Inventec and, indeed, company spokesperson Alexander Hsu did not reveal which client has cut orders.
As such, that HP was the one who canceled the tablet orders is not confirmed, though all other signs seem to suggest this is the case (Inventec was the only assembly partner for TouchPads).
Basically, Invented laid off a number of employees on October 5, those that were tasked with building its tablets.
Initially, when HP was still optimistic about the webOS TouchPad, it wanted to gain a strong share, so upstream suppliers had to prepare accordingly.
Inventec, thus, hired about 1,000 people to handle production, people that, apparently, had to be let go now that the company isn't going to make the tablets anymore, or not as many anyway.
It is unclear if all of those employees were let go or just part of them. Either way, this event is somewhat similar to how Quanta reduced its product lines in Taiwan, following RIM's order reduction.