SHOCK: RIM PlayBook outsells Apple iPad
In Canada... in one chain... but it's a start!
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 RIM on creating the bestselling tablet computer of the week. RIM obviously wasted no time in telling the world.
Whether the iPad and the PlayBook can really be considered competitive products is open to debate. Future Shop sells both, but the cheapest iPad is over two-and-a-half times the price of a PlayBook (519 Canadian dollars, compared to 199 for a PlayBook) and they appeal to very different markets.
More likely this jump in sales is down to BlackBerry fans who've been waiting for more-positive reviews before trousering a tablet-size device. Version two of the BlackBerry OS was rolled out onto PlayBooks last month and has been well received, trigging a latent demand, but that doesn't bring new customers into the fold.
It's also worth remembering that RIM is a Canadian company; it has a presence in the country that engenders some nationalistic appeal, so Canadian sales shouldn't be taken too seriously.
The US government is certainly leaning away from RIM, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration saying earlier this month that it would be dumping 3,000 BlackBerrys, while the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives just told Politico magazine it plans to swap out 3,800 of them, mainly for iPhones.
Retail sales are all very well, and welcome, but it's those big customers that are bankrolling the handset innovation RIM needs to sustain. Lose too many of those and the company can quickly slip behind before we even get the chance to see what the new OS will look like on a phone. ®
COMMENTS
US Government Agencies Ignore Security Threats...
That seems to be a good headline for the comment in this story about people leaving BlackBerry handsets for iPhones... it is amazing to me that any government agency would adopt an iPhone or an Android phone over a BlackBerry if you are talking about corporate data!
I understand the need to support the desires of the employees to want to use their consumer devices... but I challenge you to count the number of stories of security issues on iOS and Android handsets over the last year... GPS tracking, remote hijacking, etc, etc.
BlackBerry, in the same timeframe has had a relatively short service outage that delayed delivery of emails and brought down the blackberry-only secure IM feature of BBM... but in reality, this outage seems to me to be far less intrusive for enterprise (BES Server) customers than the media portrayed.
I like my BlackBerry, I like the fact that BlackBerry does operate in a country that (for the time being) does not require backdoors for "government" watchdogs, and I like the fact that the device is still primarily about what I need to do for business. It is efficient but feature-rich where it counts.
Oh - and the Playbook.... it follow the same line as the handsets... simply works. And since the new OS, works very well... and I could care less about "native email"... actually have not even configured it ... the BlackBerry Bridge is a much better solution for me!
My $0.02
You missed the fact
That the iPad 3 is being launched this week so sales are down pending details of the new model. The fact that RIM are losing money on each PlayBook sold won't be much consolation either.
Don't take the sales figures too seriously........
"It's also worth remembering that RIM is a Canadian company; it has a presence in the country that engenders some nationalistic appeal, so Canadian sales shouldn't be taken too seriously."
If thats the case, then apple's sales in the US should not be taken too seriously because they're an american company and it may engender some nationalistic appeal.
Re: Why are they dumping Blackberries for Iphones?
You misunderstand. It doesn't matter what an engineer wants. It matters what the CEO, COO and CEFO want.
Re: US Government Agencies Ignore Security Threats...
Where does email go before it arrives on your BB? Canada. Whilst surely not a big worry in terms on global threats, the fact it is in someone else's hands at all worries me. Single point of failure beyond my control.., no thanks.
