HP (NYSE: HPQ) is ready to join the tablet party. After playing very coy regarding the launch date and pricing for its WebOS tablet, the TouchPad, HP has made it official: the device will be available in the U.S. on July 1st for $499 and $599.
That’s perhaps a little later than some might have expected after rumors started flying about May launch events, but in line with the vague “summer” launch expectations HP set in February. A Wi-Fi only version of TouchPad will be available for $499 with 16GB of storage or $599 with 32GB of storage. The usual suspects in U.S. consumer electronics retailing are on board, including Best Buy, Staples, Walmart, and Amazon.com (NSDQ: AMZN), among others. AT&T (NYSE: T) will carry a wireless data-capable version of the TouchPad, but pricing and availability for that version were not disclosed Thursday.
The TouchPad will join an increasingly crowded group of challengers to Apple’s iPad, which pretty much owns the young tablet market at this point. None of the vaunted launches this year–Motorola’s Xoom, Research in Motion’s Playbook, and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab–appear to have done much of anything to slow down Apple’s tablet momentum. Apple has sold 25 million iPads to date since last year, it announced this week at WWDC, and it’s hard to believe that the combined challenges have sold much more than a million or so of their own product.
Pricing and availability for other countries will be announced at a later date, with the U.K., France, Ireland, and Germany getting the TouchPad a few days after the U.S. launch followed by Canada in mid-July and Italy, Spain, and Australia coming later in the year, HP said.

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