1. fairfaxnut's Avatar
    With recent articles articulating RIM's potential overhang in playbooks, I find it amusing that most stores are sold out (here in Canada anyway). I think this latest price drop is a brilliant move on behalf of RIM because they, among others, are realizing that the Xbox business model is the new future of hardware. Give it away, flood the market, earn revenues with software related sales (apps, games, books, music). If RIM is able to pull this off, and get some much needed advertising and app development, we could see the playbook as not dead in the water, but taking some market share away from Apple. With touchpads, fires, playbooks and nooks flooding the market with the "cheaper alternative" hardware, this may be the new dawn of PC vs. Mac all over again. Where I think RIM differentiates itself is with it's "android player" and security. If RIM can emulate some other OS and maintain security on their platform, RIM may emerge as a dominant platform....an OS for OS's. Windows 8 will be a game changer to watch for. Rim should start making a player for this now.
    Jake2826 likes this.
    11-22-11 06:41 AM
  2. brucep1's Avatar
    Unfortunately, the Xbox model is infinitely more profitable.
    JBenn911 likes this.
    11-22-11 06:45 AM
  3. Vostro15's Avatar
    I'm not sure RIM is following the carefully planned Xbox model, it's more like they're being forced to adopt the TouchPad plan.
    JeepBB likes this.
    11-22-11 07:07 AM
  4. Fat Bastage's Avatar
    How can it be brilliant to sell out of your product at a loss with a huge fire sale before the busiest electronics buying season? For the next 4 weeks people will be splurging on gadjets and the stores will be out of stock on playbooks.


    Puzzling.
    11-22-11 07:11 AM
  5. fairfaxnut's Avatar
    Although I think it was never their intention to sell their hardware like this, it may turn out better because they can flood the market. The key will be if they can get their act together with advertising, and complete OS2.
    11-22-11 07:13 AM
  6. OMGitworks's Avatar
    With recent articles articulating RIM's potential overhang in playbooks, I find it amusing that most stores are sold out (here in Canada anyway). I think this latest price drop is a brilliant move on behalf of RIM because they, among others, are realizing that the Xbox business model is the new future of hardware. Give it away, flood the market, earn revenues with software related sales (apps, games, books, music). If RIM is able to pull this off, and get some much needed advertising and app development, we could see the playbook as not dead in the water, but taking some market share away from Apple. With touchpads, fires, playbooks and nooks flooding the market with the "cheaper alternative" hardware, this may be the new dawn of PC vs. Mac all over again. Where I think RIM differentiates itself is with it's "android player" and security. If RIM can emulate some other OS and maintain security on their platform, RIM may emerge as a dominant platform....an OS for OS's. Windows 8 will be a game changer to watch for. Rim should start making a player for this now.
    You should go to work for RIM, you'd be right at home with their marketing people. There is NOTHING good about them having to sell all these PBs at a loss. They are not getting any good advertising out of this, only bad press and what looks like a panic fire sale. Touting your andriod emulater and trying to market on that or emulating W8 is foolish. Just buy an Android or Windows tablet if that is what you want. Touchpad and PB were cheaper b/c nobody was buying them, that is not a strategy but a fail. The Fire is cheaper b/c they want to suck you into their extensive content universe. RIM doesn't have much content to sell or software and soon carriers are going to squish them on the fees they are paying to have BB service which I think is about $5 per month per subscriber (could be wrong on this.) None of this is a good long term strategy. Taking market share from Apple, really???

    I like my PB but to say that it has been anything short of a major disaster for RIM or to try to blame the media is simply foolish.
    JeepBB likes this.
    11-22-11 07:46 AM
  7. MrsGatz's Avatar
    You should go to work for RIM, you'd be right at home with their marketing people. There is NOTHING good about them having to sell all these PBs at a loss. They are not getting any good advertising out of this, only bad press and what looks like a panic fire sale. Touting your andriod emulater and trying to market on that or emulating W8 is foolish. Just buy an Android or Windows tablet if that is what you want. Touchpad and PB were cheaper b/c nobody was buying them, that is not a strategy but a fail. The Fire is cheaper b/c they want to suck you into their extensive content universe. RIM doesn't have much content to sell or software and soon carriers are going to squish them on the fees they are paying to have BB service which I think is about $5 per month per subscriber (could be wrong on this.) None of this is a good long term strategy. Taking market share from Apple, really???

    I like my PB but to say that it has been anything short of a major disaster for RIM or to try to blame the media is simply foolish.

    Just............No.

    The future is content. Not the player in itself is useless.
    Superfly_FR likes this.
    11-22-11 08:04 AM
  8. OMGitworks's Avatar
    Just............No.

    The future is content. Not the player in itself is useless.
    And what content does RIM have compared to any of the big players??? Nada. Flooding the market iwth 500,000 PB isn't really much of a draw to developers. A second rate Andriod or W8 players won't help. I think it is safe to say that RIM can never catch up to the i-stores or Amazon who each have their own hardware. What was left for RIM was a true professional/business device, just like the BB phones were the a$$ kicking e-mail devices professionals relied on. They missed boat on that by not having native PIM and decent office type apps and no decent file or PDF manipulating functions. Still can't do any sort of decent editing or spread sheet work or deal with large PDF's or files in an efficient way. Still need my laptop. Specs are great, but even at $199 its tough to justify for those without a BB phone.
    JeepBB likes this.
    11-22-11 08:15 AM
  9. NaijaBerry's Avatar
    As a couple of people have said, the future is content and with that in mind it makes a whole lot of sense to take a good chunk from the market that would have gone to the kindle fire, if there was no price drop.
    kbz1960 likes this.
    11-22-11 08:59 AM
  10. OMGitworks's Avatar
    As a couple of people have said, the future is content and with that in mind it makes a whole lot of sense to take a good chunk from the market that would have gone to the kindle fire, if there was no price drop.
    I agree about content, but what does RIM have to offer as far as content goes???? Great they sold the hardware but they really don't sell music, movies, books, Apps or other content so having a loss leader hardware with no content to sell seems like a bad idea? I can see and appreciate why Amazon's Fire is a great idea as they have tons of stuff to sell you after you buy the hardware, and Apple charges a lot for their hardware and gets you on content too, but RIM seems to have neither.

    RIM will barely dent the tablet market. I am not sure the Fire sales #'s but I bet they would eclipse PB entire sell thru in pre-order? Maybe not, but we'll see.

    Edit:
    Amazon wrote 500,000 pre-orders for its upcoming Kindle Fire tablet between Sept. 28 and Oct. 28. According to Carter Nicholas of industry research firm eDataSource, Amazon may have may have sold a million more through retail partners during that timeframe,
    Last edited by OMGitworks; 11-22-11 at 09:10 AM. Reason: added quote on Fire sales
    JeepBB likes this.
    11-22-11 09:06 AM
  11. Bla1ze's Avatar

    RIM will barely dent the tablet market. I am not sure the Fire sales #'s but I bet they would eclipse PB entire sell thru in pre-order? Maybe not, but we'll see.

    Edit:
    Amazon wrote 500,000 pre-orders for its upcoming Kindle Fire tablet between Sept. 28 and Oct. 28. According to Carter Nicholas of industry research firm eDataSource, Amazon may have may have sold a million more through retail partners during that timeframe,
    They sold more pre-order Fires then what RIM reported as shipped PlayBooks on the last earnings call.
    11-22-11 09:29 AM
  12. pkcable's Avatar
    KF is gonna be a hit, it's got a GREAT price point and the backing of Amazon. The Nook Tablet is probably a little better, BUT the better device doesn't always win. Anyone remember betamax? I'm not surprized if you don't. I bought a KF for my Dad for Christmas.
    11-22-11 09:36 AM
  13. _StephenBB81's Avatar
    I think the PlayBook sale serves 2 purposes

    Increases market penetration of the PlayBook, in terms of Tablets that doesn't really matter, WHAT does matter is that that many more PlayBook users are out there, so Developers will think a little bit more about downloading the tool kit, RIM needs them to do that so when they Launch the first BBX phone, it has a heck of a lot more apps than the PlayBook and OS7 devices had at launch.

    Next you get a User who is 6-8 months in on their 3 year contract with a Canadian Carrier, they have 22 months or so using their BlackBerry since few buy outside of contract, in those 22 months they now have a PlayBook to Bridge to, and they get to play with OTA updates of the PlayBook and being familiar with the BBX OS when their time comes to buy in 2012, 2013 a new phone, do they want to give up their playbook companion?

    The PlayBook is fun to use, all it lacks are some key apps, and to get key apps RIM needs numbers in the Market.

    I would have preferred to see them do a $249/$299/$399 16/32/64GB sale so minimize the write off speculations, but they picked a pricepoint and went at it.
    11-22-11 09:59 AM
  14. MrsGatz's Avatar
    They sold more pre-order Fires then what RIM reported as shipped PlayBooks on the last earnings call.
    Like Apple, RIM needs passionate people to handle the store and content, culture wise they are a flop.

    Get me Jeff Bezos, and we'd have a hit!
    11-22-11 11:10 AM
  15. mandony's Avatar
    By short term 'sales' RIM has a solved a few problems:

    1) they have excess inventory
    2) they have a cash flow problem
    3) they have 7" competition from Amazon and B and N
    4) they have need to have more consumers using the product - this will bring more sales to their music and app stores, and new BBphone users

    NOT A SURPRISE: At time of their last quarter report the CEO specifically said they would do sales before the end of the year.
    11-22-11 11:35 AM
  16. Fat Bastage's Avatar
    Does anyone think they will be able to raise the price back up to profitability again? I can't think of any consumer electronics item that was able to raise the price after a fire sales and be successful. Maybe I am missing some.
    11-22-11 11:46 AM
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