SHOCK: RIM PlayBook outsells Apple iPad Canadian gadget emporium Future Shop sold more BlackBerry PlayBooks than iPads last week, indicating the end of Apple's dominance or at least lending some succour to RIM's investors. The retail chain, which has 145 branches across Canada, isn't saying how many of either tablet it has sold, but tweeted its congratulations to …
1. Everyone in the world knows that the iPad 3 is coming out this week--of course iPad sales are slow. If the Playbook had outsold the iPad for a full quarter--instead of a week--that might be a little different.
2. PlayBook was supposed to sell for $499 not $199. RIM is taking a complete bath on this device. Selling more of these gizmos will help RIM go bankrupt sooner rather than later. They have Osborned themselves into a corner by publicizing their QNX future, yet having no phones to run it with yet. Their QNX tablet aspirations are a waste of time without a QNX phone.
I not arguing that iPad is better or not, RIM simply doesn't have a means of subsidizing the Playbook like this long term like Amazon can subsidize the Kindle.
@synthmeister, I think you're right about RIM having osborned themselves, but I'm not sure they had much choice. If they'd kept quiet about their plans then it would have looked like they didn't care about the smartphone revolution. That would have raised questions about the long term and pushed buyers toward other platforms that were moving forward. That would probably have been worse.
As it is I think RIM have bravely chosen what will be an excellent technical solution (the Playbook really is quite good), but will require a lot of hard work to get people to understand and want the benefits. They could have chosen to do something clunky (ie squeezing a desktop OS onto a mobile platform like Android and iOS) but that would have lessened the technical value of their offering.
RIM is absolutely taking a bath on the Playbook. RIM originally sold the PlayBook for $499, $599, or $699, depending on the onboard storage. Then they slashed all models to $299, then they slashed it again to $199, 249 and 299. By all accounts the build quality is much higher than the Kindle ($199 only 8GB) and most everyone says that Amazon is barely breaking even on the Kindle at best.
They are most certainly NOT merely breaking even on the Kindle. Similar specs from start-up companies in India are at a cost of $75 American with stripped down versions hitting government contracts at $60 American in lots of 10,000. Amazon won't admit digital publishing has pushed profits into the stratosphere let alone that selling their delivery system is also profitable. People might just come off the rails and demand that price reduction on books promised by digital publishing initially.
RIM can’t catch a break. Not only is the company coping with dismal PlayBook tablet sales, it’s also taking a near half-billion-dollar hit for sitting inventory that must now be sold at rock-bottom prices.
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/12/rim-troubles-continue/
RIM announced on Friday that the company wouldn’t be meeting its financial targets for the year, primarily due to the unsuccessful performance of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. It pushed 150,000 units this quarter, compared with 250,000 last quarter, and 500,000 in the first quarter of the year.
The company is offering the troubled tablet for dramatically discounted prices through Dec. 3. Prices were slashed $300 across the product line-up, and quickly sold out at retailers like Best Buy by last week’s Black Friday. Nonetheless, RIM announced today that it’s recognizing “a pre-tax provision in the third quarter of fiscal 2012 of approximately $485 million, $360 million after tax, related to its inventory valuation of BlackBerry PlayBook tablets.”
RIM are selling these play books at a loss - Amazon (who sell more Android tablets) said they were selling the Fire at a small loss / break even - so RIM with lower volumes etc. certainly will be.
At least Amazon hope to sell you 'content' - RIM are just hoping to clear warehouses stacked out with Playbooks they could only shift at a loss. Remember HP and their Tablet - history repeating itself.
Don't be surprised if the Playbook is dead in 6-12 months and RIM 12-18 months after that - well that or they get bought up by someone...
iPad sales will be down this week as the world and his dog are waiting for the iPad 3 now - not much of a story really. Same as people going on about iPhone sales down weeks before the iPhone 4S was released then lo-and-behold sales are massively up next period.
People are only buying the Playbook as it's cheap but probably being sold at a loss. RIM need to shift the excess inventory before it's worthless and probably making zero on it / taking a loss. great marketing.
In related news, I can run faster than Bolt ... when he's walking round the supermarket with a trolley, if I take performance enhancing drugs. iPad sales are pretty much on hold right now because everyone knows the next version comes out this month - only an idiot or someone in a hurry would buy an iPad 2 right now - and Playbook has the home-field advantage, as well as being less than half the price.
RIM have already eaten a nine figure loss on their tablet attempt, and only just managed to give it an email client - which still lacks support for their own proprietary email service! So much for their one and only "selling point" of vendor lockin.
The multi-day outage ruled out ever using a BB myself; the absurd straw man about "better to route encrypted traffic through RIM servers than unencrypted" (when we can all use encrypted email anyway: it's not the 90s any more!) doesn't exactly boost confidence in those people's opinion about BB's claimed security. Remote wipe, wipe on password failure, encrypted storage and network traffic, password complexity rules - I'm not seeing anything that's exclusive to RIM's offering there.
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