RIM Drops Playbook Price By 66% 302
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?"
Nice hardware. Blackberry OS - not so much. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Biased much? (Score:5, Interesting)
I know business degrees don't usually require you to know how to count, but it's the first time I've seen marketshare stats touted around that add up to 111%.
As much as I'd like that to be the case (competition is good), I'd have issue trusting numbers with such flaws. Either it's quoted out of context or the people who did it flunk stats 101.
Re:warranty in case of bankruptcy? (Score:5, Interesting)
It amazes me how much trouble companies go through in order to avoid using free software. Just amazing. Apple did it but they locked it up by going with only BSD stuff. HP and RIM both avoided Android hoping that Android didn't matter as much as having "a tablet" did. (Hello? How long have you guys been working in the technology industries? Software is ALWAYS more important than the hardware.) Nokia did it too. They wanted to create their own thing... what? Twice? Three times? Now, still trying to avoid Android, they went with Microsoft?
This sort of denial is a kind of poison which should be used to kill CEOs of these companies. They should all be smarter than that.
Only one company has historically ever gotten away with the tactic of creating their own software/hardware ecosystem. That company is Apple. But in exchange for their success in this, they have to accept their limited corner while the bustling world of business goes on all around them.
Re:It's possible (Score:4, Interesting)
Not really. There are tons of companies assembling pre-made parts into computers, but the actual construction of the things that go into a PC has slimmed right down to just a few large-scale manufacturers, with most of that happening in Asia.
The entire operation operates on razor thin margins that can only really work with high volume sales.
If you are a higher-level "manufacturer" like Dell, Toshiba, HP, Apple etc, then you are limited by what parts are available to you. Unless you have the purchasing power to make it worth while for a component maker to do something custom for you (like Apple) then having custom parts made for you is expensive and drives up costs to the end user - which is very tough in a race-to-the-bottom PC market. Subsequently, the PC you buy from Dell, HP, Toshiba or even Apple doesn't really differ all that much. The cases are different, but that's most of it. If you want ethernet, there's a small number of controllers for that, if you want audio, the same is true. If you want wireless, again you have a small selection of components.
If anything is going to create a monoculture in the computing industry it will be the relentless drive from consumers that says PCs must be cheaper cheaper cheaper!