Dixons stores knock £150 off RIM PlayBook
Enough to drum up demand?
PC World and Currys have knocked 150 quid off the price of RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook in a bid to encourage sales of the 7in tablet.
Previously priced at £399, the 16GB PlayBook can now be had for £249. Likewise, the once £479 32GB model is now just £329.
The cuts come just a few weeks after RIM knocked $200 off the US price, taking the tablet down to $299, surely inspired by the success of HP's $99-a-pop TouchPad sale and Amazon's introduction of a $199 7in tablet, the Kindle Fire.
Indeed, the Fire is said to be based on hardware already developed for the PlayBook.
Whatever, channel sources who've spoke to Channel Register over the past few months suggest demand for the PlayBook is weak, so RIM an its retailers have little choice but to egg on potential punters by offering the tablet at a more attractive price.
Especially, perhaps, given last week's mass BlackBerry outage. ®
COMMENTS
Pointless...
iPad price tag...
Proprietary OS tied to RIM.
Requires a blackberry phone for some functions to work.
Hardly any apps.
Only 7"
Honestly, how did they ever expect this to fly? If you want to sell tablets, you have to offer comparable specs to Apple while undercutting them on price because Apple is seen as a premium brand...
People won't pay Rolex prices for a Casio, but they're quite happy to buy a Casio at sensible prices.
Root
Is what you need sir. My old HTC Hero runs gingerbread really rather well these days.
I assume that once they get cheap enough, Amazon can buy up the lot, reflash them, and call them the Fire 2. Product development with someone else paying for the R&D. Nice.
Surprised they hadn't cut the prices already
I imagine vast tracts of warehousing had to be rented just to store unsold Playbooks.
