Did We Just See the BlackBerry PlayBook Fire Sale?
Did We Just See the BlackBerry PlayBook Fire Sale?
Posted 11/28/2011 at 3:48pm
| by Ryan Whitwam
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As Black Friday approached, several retailers including Best Buy lowered the price of the much-maligned BlackBerry Playbook. After selling an undisclosed number of the device, Best buy has taken to cancelling orders. By some accounts, all outstanding online orders have been cancelled, and the device is no longer listed on the Best Buy site. Did we just see the PlayBook fire-sale?
Best Buy usually keeps products on the website if they are just temporarily sold out, which leads many to believe that the PlayBook is not going to be restocked. The price drop was supposed to be part of RIM promotion running all the way through December, but customers can’t even snag rain checks for the tablet.
The PlayBook had a rough launch with many die-hard BlackBerry devotees lamenting the lack of native email. RIM has dropped the official price to $300, with $200 being common for promotions. With the Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire on the market, can RIM even give this thing away anymore?
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fuzz_64
November 29, 2011 at 9:32am
EVERYONE here at work has a playbook - myself included. Actual owners know how good the device is.. we LOVE it!!
I've got a few contacts at RIM keeping me up to date on stuff.. The new PlayBook and OS update is right around the corner. :)
ramblerblake
November 29, 2011 at 2:39am
"...can RIM even give this thing away anymore?"
Sure, I'll take one. :)
Holly Golightly
November 29, 2011 at 12:51am
Gosh... I seriously hope this does not spell the end of the PlayBook. I do not know why they never included a native email app for it. This was the first tablet that felt right. The iPad is too big to hold with one hand, and it also felt fragile compared to the Playbook. Does not fit will in a lady's handbag. The Playbook felt perfect to hold because of the materials they used. It screamed quality and durability.
The problem with the Kindle Fire and Nook Color is that they do not offer the complete tablet experience. They both do not offer dual webcams, and have limited storage capability. They are primarily eReaders before they are tablets. Fire and Color are also locked to their respective distributors. To me, these "tablets" feel incomplete... But you get what you pay for.
What could have helped the PlayBook was also Skype. The front camera is pretty much useless without IM support. Only select (Verizon Wireless) Blackberries supported Skype. How bureaucratic?
The future is all about tablets, not cellphones!
big_montana
November 29, 2011 at 5:57am
The reason RIM did not include an email/calendar/contact app with the Playbook was for one reason, they could not get the QNX OS to talk to their BES server software. Without BES support, RIM would have to use Microsoft’s ActiveSync to provide mail push to the device, which was not going to happen. They finally solved the QNX/BES issue, and will deploy an update soon for the Playbook that includes an email/calendar/contact app and BES push support. As for those who think this device is a fail, well there are several million devoted Blackberry customers out there who would purchase this once push comes it, for use in the enterprise, as the iPad is a nice consumer device, buck sucks doing anything business related, the same can be said for Android tablets too.
firefox91
November 28, 2011 at 8:13pm
RIM is going down for a reason. Number 1 is lack of apps. Yes, they have a lot of apps. But do they have the popular apps? Do they have the new apps? Nope. This is why I dropped my Blackberry phone the day I was eligible to. I just got a Nook Tabet and rooted it and it does pretty much everything I want now. Sorry RIM, you are a sinking ship.
big_montana
November 29, 2011 at 6:00am
Enterprise users do not care about applications, only Apple and Android fanboys who do not use their devices for work. That is what a Blackberry is, and enterprise workhorse, something that an iPhone or Android phone can only dream about being. For full disclosure I own a Blackberry Curve for work, and an HTC Evo for play. Blackberry's just work when it comes to email push, I have seen far to many issues with both Android and iPhones in the enterprise, and Siri just add's another security nightmare.
ashinms
November 28, 2011 at 8:01pm
I love mine. Too many people who don't own a product bitching about it.
Keith E. Whisman
November 28, 2011 at 6:51pm
Was'nt the blackberry the phone that was designed from the ground up with messaging and email at its heart? So why would a company that builds devices designesnto make your email portable and accessible anywhere build a tablet without email support?
I sure hope they don't do the hp thing and announce they are leaving the cellphone market to focus all their energy on the newest high tech toilet or something off the wall like that.
big_montana
November 29, 2011 at 6:02am
Because they adopted a new OS (QNX) and it took RIM until recently to get QNX and their BES push enterprise server software to talk to each other. The email client will be rolling out soon to the Playbook.
kixofmyg0t
November 28, 2011 at 7:45pm
I wouldn't buy a RIM built toilet. That thing would take 9 minutes to flush and would probably freeze mid flush and you'd have to pull the water pipe from it 2-3 times a day for no reason.
No thanks.
Asterixx
November 29, 2011 at 3:32am
I nominate this for post of the week. Love it. It was my hatred for my Blackberry doing all of the above (every time I wanted to end a call it would freeze and it would frequently spontaneously reboot, a 10 minute affair) that drove me to an iPhone 4S the very day I was eligible for an upgrade.
BlazePC
November 28, 2011 at 6:07pm
Additional information that should be noted is that the 64 GB configurations built earlier this year were notorious for having consistently borked displays, with high counts of dead pixels and edge-light-bleed.
This has been confirmed with multiple purchase verifications. The other configs can have dead pixels as well but for some reason the 64 GB models are really bad. Interesting that BB has abandoned the Playbook so rapidly; it probably has something to do with not only meager sales but high return rates as a result of RIM's lack of quality control and the software issues as you've so succinctly pointed out. Oh and before I forget, there is the highly documented issues with the ultra-micro power switch that come straight from the factory not having a proper actuation - translation - not having that positive "click". Some are so bad that the button is in fact flush with the chassis, requiring an exorbitant amount of force to actually do anything. Someone should be fired for that - - really bad product execution IMHO.
Playbooks are a nice product in concept but RIM dropped the ball on numerous fronts.
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