There was alot of speculation in the thread on the discounted new price of $299.
This sheds some light- from Reuters .
"RIM sold just 850,000 PlayBooks from the tablet's launch in April to the end of November, and took a $485 million hit to write down the value of unsold inventory it has discounted sharply.
RIM touts PlayBook 2.0, minor BlackBerry upgrade | Technology | Reuters