Price-slashing fails to ignite PlayBook sales
Channel says fondleslab fever bypassing RIM
RIM's little-loved fondleslab is failing to get the tills ringing, even after significant price cuts, channel partners have claimed.
BlackBerry PlayBook prices were cut by $200 in the US last month as retailers cried out for something extra to help shift mountain mounting stock levels estimated at some half a million units across the world.
Last week, retailers PC World and Currys lopped £150 off the price of the 16GB and 32GB models, and other partners including Carphone Warehouse, Phone4U, Best Buy along with business resellers Insight, Vodafone and Orange all had access to the same rebate deal.
But sources reckon that while the discounts have given ensuing sales a slight uplift, adoption remains disappointing.
This is hardly the reaction troubled RIM would have hoped for following HP's fire sales of TouchPads after it killed off the product line and reduced prices for an entry level SKU to £89.
The main sticking point is the lack of features – unless tethered to a BlackBerry: there's no contact database, native email, chat app or 3G connectivity.
But the recent high-profile three-day debacle in which BlackBerry email services were up and down has not warmed customers to the PlayBook, added sources.
"The timing of BlackBerry [mail] going down over three days [means that] people have lost confidence," said a source.
RIM last month dismissed industry talk that it is set to jettison the PlayBook as "pure fiction" but it has yet to turn its fondleslab into a real killer product. ®
COMMENTS
"99% certain it will be a complete flop"
You're right, but it's like predicting that a horse might not win a race when it's in last place and going the wrong way round the course...
Problems
I think the main problems compared to the Touchpad are;
1) The RIM OS on the Playbook is rubbish, unlike WebOS on the Touchpad which is actually reasonably usable. As RobE says, there isn't really any particular attraction for consumers or businesses as the consumers don't get BBM or whatever and the businesses don't get the enterprise tools. Plus it looks like even RIM are thinking of dropping it, why should people buy it?
2) There's no real hope for an Android release. A lot of more technical users bought the Touchpad solely because there was a high chance Android would be hacked onto it, ensuring future software updates independent of fickle HP. I haven't heard of any similar thing going on with the Playbook.
3) Playbook is selling for more than the Touchpad's fire sale.
Why is this such as surprise to them?
Remember back in the 90s when there was a huge fight going on between Palm and HP for control of the PDA market? The reason why Palm lost was because HP were making big advances in wireless technology and in particular the integration of telephony systems into PDAs. As the smartphone market grew exponentially, the PDA market dwindled for the simple reason that people didn't want to carry around multiple devices to do one task - namely internet browsing.
After all, why shell out for £300 fondleslab *and* a £300 phone to browse the internet when the £300 phone can do it by itself or a £450 intergrated slab can do it by itself.
wow £150 off
£250 quid for the cheapest 7" version is still effing expensive for a tricket in todays economy
For Glod's sake, lads, have some paitience!
They slashed the prices a week ago and are already dissapointed that the sales haven't picked up?
People have other things to do with their lives that wait in the starting blocks for a fondle slab sale, particularly since you have already missed the boat. You are not going to change a year-built opinion in less than 7 days!
What is it with these high-tech CEOs and their impatience? They pre-announce the things a year before they ship, and we are supposed to sit and twiddle our thumbs while they get round to it, then they expect us to go all pavlov's dog, having been dissapointed enough already, when they move the price point from silly down to daft?
Apotheker kicked the whole product line out because it didn't kill apple in a couple of months. Deluded. Now this bloke thinks a bit off a heavily over-priced and under-performing doorstop will revolutionise the market? Between the first IPud and now the world's consumers have taken a bath over tax, employment prospects, and savings. The early adopters have already adopted apple, the market followers are going to (quite rightly) follow the biggest herd.
Grow up. Just Grow up.
