back to article RIM PlayBook price cut specials become standard

Reg Hardware Mobile Week The massive reductions RIM has made to the price of its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet are no longer one-offs but appear to have become the norm. RIM's own online shop now lists the 16GB PlayBook at the "new low price" of $199 (£125) and, as Lilliputing notes, the site no longer refers to the reduction …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Problem is

    Unlike the HP deals, where you could get a cheap tablet and run Android on it, the playbook is dying on it's arse for two simple reasons.

    1/ Buisnesses would never buy them as it's got "play" in it's title.

    2/ Consumers would never buy one because it's a dead product with a locked bootloader.

    Really, whatever idiot decided to call it the Playbook when their primary market was business, really needs to be flipping burgers right now, as I wouldn't trust him with much else.

    They didn't help themselves either, with their mis-selling of their Android "compatibility", which got people's hopes up, only to be destroyed when the reality struck them that it wasn't runtime emulation of Android, it was compile-time...

    1. Justicesays
      FAIL

      Re: Problem is

      Yep,

      great minds worked on this product

      1) Limit the target market to people who already own one of your devices, by not offering your most popular application (BM) unless linked to a blackberry.

      2) Call it the "Playbook", a baseball reference that only Americans could interpret as anything other than a name for a leisure device

      3) Price it at a premium.

      4)....

      5) Profit? - I dont think so.

    2. Charles Calthrop

      Re: Problem is

      2/ Consumers would never buy one because it's a dead product with a locked bootloader.

      no. consumers did not buy them because they bought the ipad instead

      do you really think the average consumer even knows what a bootloader is let alone cares

    3. Bronek Kozicki
      Thumb Down

      Re: Problem is

      1/ business sometimes buy products with the most silly of names e.g. rational rose or, come to think of it, phones named after certain kind of berry fruit. Does not seem name affects buying decision.

      2/ as far as I'm aware, 80% of tablet market is owned by leading device of other fruity brand, with locked bootloader. Does not seem to bother majority of consumers at all.

      Also, unlocking PB is actually trivial, just ask RIM nicely for developer keys - they give then away for free and you normally don't have to wait longer than 2 hours. As for Android emulation, it is actually runtime I think - rebuilding from sources does not seem necessary to put any Android app on own device (using developer keys I referred to above), only different packaging.

      But what do I know, I actually own one, so obviously am not entitled to comment on it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Stop

        Re: Re: Problem is

        Clearly you don't as if you did, you would know you can't run Android APK's on it.. You have to compile from Android source to made an Android app work on a Playbook.

        Even then, only certain API's are supported, its fraught with danger, and nobody is bothering for an effectively dead product.

  2. dogged
  3. Mostly_Harmless Silver badge
    Thumb Down

    Reg Fail

    RIM story without a double entendre in the headline....must try harder

  4. James 51

    Have been planning to get one of these. Might hold off now to see what the new ones are like and see if they drive the prices of the orginal down further.

    1. QuietLeni
      Coat

      Any lower than £125 for a 16GB Tablet?

      If the price went any lower than £125 for a 16GB tablet, that means that RIM are going to drop them completely, with virtually no development (like HP, where they just reduced their Dev Team to less than 350).

  5. Bronek Kozicki

    RE: Any lower than £125 for a 16GB Tablet?

    I think RIM has no choice but to keep PB alive, it is after all the only device where developers can develop for future BB10 phones. RIM badly needs these apps, otherwise they can just give away their market share on phone market. Yes I can imagine sniggering comments below but RIM market share outside of western developed countries is actually quite respectable and enough to ensure future profits - if they don't repeat too many of past mistakes.

    Selling the device with hardware spec better than Kindle Fire, at the same price point, and capable of running the same software seems like a good decision to me.

  6. kinhardware
    Thumb Up

    Actually a pretty decent 7" tablet

    When the price hit £169 I went and bought one; it's a brilliant little tablet.. nice hardware spec, reasonable number of apps.. esp if you sideload whatever Android apps you want. Easy to root. Absolutely no regrets about buying one, however I don't believe it's worth the original RRP.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Get a playbook app in their store by the 3rd, get a free playbook. (This includes submitting your android app.)

    Attend their session at Mobile World Congress, get a free playbook.

    It's an interesting way to recruit developers...

  8. Tom 3

    Here's a great use for the playbook:

    http://www.facebook.com/pacemakermusic

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