RIM Drops Playbook Price By 66%

YokimaSun writes "Following on from the news that RIM's partner was pulling the plug on its BlackBerry phones, RIM announced it was discontinuing the 16GB version of its playbook, PC Gaming News are reporting that the PlayBook is being discounted down by as much as 66% which is adding to the demise of RIM's attempt at the tablet market. Can anything stop the all conquering iPad?"

It's possible

[JBMcB]

Someone can beat the iPad. It will need to be substantially better (nicer UI, better hardware, longer battery life, etc...) at the same, or lower price.

Another problem is Ecosystem - Apple has a fantastic selection of movies, music, apps, etc... The closest competitor in that area is Amazon, which is probably why the Fire is the only tablet gaining significant market share against the iPad.

Re:It's possible

[jimicus]

Lose the fixation on price.

Seriously, it's dangerous. The entire PC industry has spent twenty years concentrating on "Cheaper! Cheaper! Cheaper!", look where it's got us. About the only company in the computer industry that's really making good money is the one that doesn't repeat "Cheaper!" like some sort of mantra. Most of the others are making spectacularly low profits considering their turnover.

Re:It's possible

[Russ1642]

This applies double to airline tickets. Consumers are the ones pushing for Cheaper! Cheaper! Cheaper! and look where that's got them.

Could somebody slap the /. editors in the head?

[mykepredko]

How is reporting on an eBay sale (for the second time in what two, three days) "news" of any kind, much less for nerds?

Now that it's happened twice, I wonder if /. is hurting so bad that they must resort to advertising stuff their putting on eBay.

What's next, IBM is in trouble because you can find PCjrs on Craigslist for under $1.00?

C'mon guys, pull it together,

myke

To The Fainting Couches!

[American AC in Paris]

Can anything stop the all conquering iPad?

Of course something can. Something eventually will.

If that something is a tablet, it'll need to be something that has measurably better hardware, a superior form factor, a superior operating system, and an easier media acquisition and management chain. "Easier" and "better" here mean "easier and better for regular users", not "easier and better for power users"; our days of supremacy in this regard are gone, folks. Failure to win on all of these points means you're starting with an inferior product against a superior product with a massive head start.

If that something is not a tablet, it'll need to be something that renders the tablet paradigm obsolete; whether that something is Google's glasses project or something entirely different remains to be seen.

If neither of the above happens, then we simply need to wait for the day when Apple loses its direction as a company and stops making devices that meet their current standards. Then it's open season.

Re:Biased much?

[ozmanjusri]

Yep.

Can anything stop the all conquering iPad?

And yes.

Around half of the tablet users are now on Android, according to a recent study brought out by the Online Publisher’s Association or OPA. To be exact, 51% of them have the Google-branded device, 52% are on iOS tablets, while 8% are on those with other platforms, such as Blackberry OS.

Re:It's possible

[dkleinsc]

The entire PC industry has spent twenty years concentrating on "Cheaper! Cheaper! Cheaper!", look where it's got us.

It took the price of a desktop PC from about $3600 to about $500 (in 2010 dollars) over that period, all while massively improving the technology. Yeah, that's a real loss.

See, here's the thing: What's a loss for the PC industry in terms of higher margins is a win for every industry and consumer that uses PCs for anything. That competitive pressure would cause the price to go down isn't a flaw, it's capitalism doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing.

Re:Nice hardware. Blackberry OS - not so much.

[haus]

Who cares?

If the only way these things will sell is at firesale prices, then you can guarantee that there will be no long term supply, hence not worth the ongoing efforts of a developer. Just bury them in the desert next to the unused Atari cartridges and move on with your life.

Re:warranty in case of bankruptcy?

[poofyhairguy82]

I think there are a few reasons why RIM didn't catch up.

Part of it was complacency. Upper management believed for far too long that RIM was unbeatable, and by the time they actually changed course it was too late.

Part of it was a lack of talent. RIM tried to make an all touch screen phone early on (the Storm came out in 2008) and it was terrible. By the Storm 2 it was obvious that the development team at RIM couldn't handle a keypad-less world, and that BB's OS couldn't keep up with the iPhone.

Part of it was poor choices. RIM worked to change OSes to fix that fact that the old BB OS didn't handle touch very well, but they made the mistake of biting on the iPad hype and they put out a tablet with the new OS before a smartphone with the new OS. The tablet failed miserably, which lost all momentum for RIM's new platform.

Part of it was a lack of vision. RIM has had some good ideas, they just lack the vision to take them that extra step. They had the first great communication platform with BBM, but they didn't think to make it seamless with texting like Apple did iMessage. They basically had the popular Kindle Fire before Amazon did, but they didn't think to try and take the "cheaper than iPad market" until it was too late.

And finally part of it was the market they catered to. Business users are often not a fan of rapid change, especially if that means the IT department has to redo how executives get their email every year. RIM ignored the consumer market for too long- when the iPhone started getting tons of fun apps you got the sense that RIM was happy its phone wasn't a "toy." By the time Apple's "toy" had added in some business functionality to encompass RIM's target market, RIM had nothing fun to offer consumers and fight Apple on their own turf. By the time they had their fun "toy" device (the Playbook, its in the name) they had to rush it out so quickly that it completely didn't fit their core market (it didn't even have email). Hence today's news.

Re:Biased much?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is slashdot, not a courtroom. Who gives a shit.

Re:No.

[Lunix Nutcase]

Yeah, except for the newest iPad, a large portion of the sales were to people who had never bought a single Apple device before. Those are hardly fanbois.

Re:Biased much?

[Nethemas the Great]

You've never evaluated the various pads from Asus have you? The Eee Transformer Prime and Transformer Pad are quite capable of eating iPads for lunch from a technology perspective. As for MS, they've had a rather poor track record in the mobile space. Not so much for lack within the OS but more with respect to their marketing department and their entry timing. That isn't changing anytime soon and it is sure to spell certain doom for their position in the consumer market.

Re:Biased much?

[Anonymous Coward]

My $500 android tablet is WAY worse than the iPad being sold at the time, which today sells for 399 and has a couple of os upgrades guaranteed. I would be lucky to sell this crap for 200 so I could get a minimally decent tablet.