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I am taking Engadget as the gospel. So we are now at T minus 55:51 and counting.02-18-12 10:09 PMLike 0 -
- I think the point is, is this is plain awful marketing strategy.
It means they created a lot of bad will among early adopters, which is terrible, and then devalued their product through these deals, special offers, and free giveaways.
You won't find Apple overdoing that because it would devalue their product, which they are aware is a bad thing.
Hence you sell an iPad 6 months or a year down the line when the next version is out, and even though its a fairly ordinary tablet in many ways, it holds its value fantastically well, reflected in the resale value.
The 'superior', in my opinion, in many ways, Playbook, has a resale value that just plummets.
When the next revision comes out, people would never trust RIM by being an early adopter when the price is likely to drop 50% or more in a year, regardless of how awesome the product is. Thats a huge problem. Even people who think its awesome won't jump in cos they know RIM products don't hold their value due to poor decisions being made.
Whereas people are very comfortable being early Apple adopters, for example, knowing their resale value will mean they won't lose too much.
The marketing fiasco and broken promises with this revision will affect future revisions and future buyers very severely, which is a pity given how close to perfect the Playbook is. Lets say the new version has updated hardware and goes up against the iPad 3, no one in their right minds would still plunk it down for a RIM product over the new iPad at the same price, they'd likely just wait a few months and pick it up at half the iPad price, which is now seen as 'normal'. The high end Playbook has been made to look a budget affair, going up against the Kindle Touch and the like. That impression will be very hard to alter.
Its sad most people dont understand the subconsious effect that all these things have, and the long term loyalty this builds for a brand and a product. While a product builds critical mass by appealing to the masses, who dont care about resale, or other factors, the truth is that to get to the point where you get the common person intereste,d you need a lot of loyalists, early adopters, and brand zealots, to get pur product started, and they are mostly the most critical subset of users and mostly more techsavvy than the average user. You guys all hate apple comparisons, but if you look at it the original iphone initially was owned by mostly IT people and very veryntechsavvy individuals. And not a single person had bad thing to say about the overall experience. And well the rest is history.
Somfor those that deny that these factors matter,well the currentplaybook sales are a good indicator of how much they do matter. And i will bet you a house that any revision that blackberry releases for the pb will also do horrible for the same reasons. Those that have the disposable income to be early adopters will never trust rim, and everyone will wait for prices to drop. Its a self fulfilling prophecy.popeyesmotto and ambarmetta like this.02-18-12 11:04 PMLike 2 -
The only real mistake RIM made was releasing a 80%-complete PlayBook and not producing a 95% update within a few months. Had it been 95% on Day One, sales would have been much better and we may never have seen the dramatic price cuts it had to endure. RIM lost serious street cred by not following through with a timely update---and has paid the price dearly.
Now it finds itself backed into a real corner: Not only must RIM release 2.0 by the end of the month, it must hit the ball out of the park with a near-perfect release.
Personally, I think they will pull it off.Last edited by dugggggg; 02-18-12 at 11:59 PM.
02-18-12 11:54 PMLike 3 - 02-19-12 07:17 AMLike 0
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