Following on from a pretty interesting week internally, RIM has decided to completely slash the price of the BlackBerry Playbook for the umpteenth time. At just £169 for the cheapest model, is the QNX-based tablet now cheap enough to finally compete?
The PlayBook is a solid piece of kit, but has failed spectacularly to live up to its hype or to pose any challenge to the iPad or its contemporaries. As such, RIM’s been on a warpath of continually cutting the tab’s price.
Today’s price cut, evident at both the Carphone Warehouse and PC World, is the most severe yet.
The PlayBook’s return: new tabs coming this year
Yesterday, those outlets would have sold you a 16GB PlayBook for £249. Today? Yours for just £169. The 32GB model is now just £199, down from £479, while the 64GB model is £249, down from £559. At £169, the PlayBook is veering dangerously close to the magic £99 mark that saw the HP TouchPad sell like Big Macs at fat camp when it was finally discontinued.
RIM’s been trying to find the right price to make the dying tablet shift in larger numbers, and this could well be it, even though the company’s having a tough time at the moment amid a corporate reshuffle.
We know that there’s going to be two new PlayBooks launched this year so there must still be some faith in the brand. It’ll be interesting to see if this extreme price plummet will help.
Via The Register
