$99 Fire sale? I think not.
There's been a fair bit of talk about a Touchpad-esque fire sale on the Playbooks. I don't think that this will happen. First, a little info.
We know that RIM has an inventory of at least $1 billion worth of hardware. A good percentage of this is Playbooks.
RIM to writedown unsold BlackBerry, PlayBook inventory - SlashGear
The playbook (16GB) currently retails for ~$199. RIM is already taking a loss at this price.
The Playbook hardware is not getting any newer.
So it's pretty easy to see why a lot of people are crying "Firesale".
But the big difference between HP and RIM in this situation is that HP were getting out of the table market. I don't think RIM will do this.
So what to do with a surplus of ageing tablets if not sell them at bargain basement prices?
Donate them to schools!
Think of how this would work for RIM. They donate several hundred thousand playbooks to schools and take a tax write-off. They don't lose any more money than they would by clearing them at $99 and they dump the majority of their inventory quickly.
Here's the kicker: you're exposing kids to Blackberry products every day of their lives. Kids will start recognizing Blackberry products rather than assuming everything is an iPad.
This will also create a HUGE market for developers.