Taiwanese Manufacturer Trims Workforce Following Dismal TouchPad and PlayBook Sales

The HP TouchPad may have lived an extremely short life span, but it has had the most dramatic moments otherwise unseen with any other tablet device. Also, while HP pulled the plug on the tablet, those employed at its manufacturing partners almost halfway round the globe in Taiwan are also among those to have found themselves in the firing line. Further, while the TouchPad may have ceased to exist completely, the RIM PlayBook might be considered next on the chopping block.

All this is definitely not good news for those currently engaged in the manufacturing of the tablet devices, with DigiTimes reporting that the Taiwanese companies, who have been the ones fielding orders for these tablets, are laying off staff due to cancelled orders. This clearly indicates gloomy times for the entire tablet segment, with the iPad being almost the sole exception.

The major companies that are affected by the TouchPad and PlayBook failure have been Inventec, who is going to lay off 400 of its employees, and Quanta is also planning to do the same to about a 1,000 of its employees.

However, amid all the gloomy pictures being painted of the tablet industry as a whole, the Kindle Fire can be considered a silver lining with the kind of response that it received. In fact, Amazon is reported to have gone for additional orders amounting to about a million more of the Kindle Fire tablet. Incidentally, Quanta computers are also entrusted with the manufacture of the Kindle Fire and it will be interesting to see if increased Kindle Fire orders from Amazon can bring more jobs to the workforce.

Further, Quanta also happens to be the manufacturing partner with Motorola, for whom it churns out the XOOM tablet PC, which is another not so successful tablet. However, Quanta can still draw solace from the fact that Motorola is pushing ahead with new gen tablets.