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?"

Comments

Biased much?

[Quakeulf]

From the summary it sounds like an advertisement for the iPad.

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:Biased much?

[Nemyst]

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:Biased much?

[h4rr4r]

Not all of them. The thing is MS is not competing in that space though. The bad ones are sub $200, and the cheapest "surface" is going to be $399ish.

Re:Biased much?

[WankersRevenge]

Nope ... it's just the editor trolling for comments, for the story itself isn't that interesting. This has been happening a lot since Malda left. Apple has become a rather polarizing issue on slashdot so any article with even the slightest mention of Apple tends to draw a lot of people out of the woodwork to throw feces at each other. It must be great for ad revenue, but as a long time reader, I'm quite bored with it and find myself skipping over a lot Apple related discussion even though I'm an iOS dev.

These days I find myself more at Ars than I do here which is a shame since I used value the discussions here in such high regard. Oh well.

Re:Biased much?

[nedlohs]

Take a fucking guess.

Re:Biased much?

[toriver]

What, you never heard the one about "we're losing money on every unit but we'll make it back in volume"? :)

Re:Biased much?

[cjb-nc]

I have two tablets, and both are android. Is that one vote or two?

Re:Biased much?

[slaker]

The RIM tablet doesn't really add anything over and above other 7" tablets that might run Android. Kindle Fire and Nook Color devices can be had for less. All of those really need work with third party firmware to be made legitimately worthwhile.

I own a whole bunch of tablets, including a (work-provided) ipad2 and several options from first-tier Android OEMs. In general, the best use I've found for them is consumption of ebooks, webcomics and product manuals. My favorite device is an 8.9" Samsung Galaxy, which has the 1280x800 screen resolution of a larger Android tablet but weighs about 2/3rds what the 1" larger ipad2 does. That's a lovely combination of form factor and usability.

I guess I could get away with doing the same things on my phone as I do with my tablets, but a 4.3" screen really doesn't have the same level of utility as a 7" or larger one.

And regarding your question, I'm sufficiently annoyed by all the drawbacks to iOS that I would never consider purchasing an Apple device for myself. Data sandboxing and format limitations drive me insane.

Re:Biased much?

[rtfa-troll]

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

Actually, part of the fun of Slashdot is identifying other posters on their assumptions, lies, debating tricks, misdirection, ad hominem attacks, use of correlation as a sign of causation, failure to use a car analogy and so on. If you have the right attitude it's even fun (if a bit painful) when other people do it to you. Look at this and you learn a fair bit. For example, a repeat post of the same material which has already been discredited is actually modded much higher than the original. Why the hell? How did he achieve that.

Why is cpu6502 reposting the same thing anyway? To me it looks like he wrote up a post in an editor and then cut and paste it again forgetting that he had posted it before. How could he forget that? Is he really posting on so many accounts in parallel, or does he just have some really good shit. On the other hand, it could be because he's part of one of the Astroturf groups? His post is actually pretty valid if you ignore the wrong number in it. I don't see how it fits into the months corporate targets.

If you start asking questions like "why the inquisition" next you'll be asking "why am I posting on Slashdot". You don't want to go there.

Re:Biased much?

[shmlco]

"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."

To be exact... no. 28% of the 51% are Kindle Fires, and they are not "Google-branded" devices, they're Amazon-branded devices. In fact, they're not even specifically sold as Android tablets, even though they run a forked version of 2.3.

Re:Biased much?

[godawful]

Or, you have studies like this.
http://gigaom.com/apple/android-tablets-ipads-still-see-wide-gap-in-mobile-web-use/
Which say the complete opposite thing. Now granted, this study does exclude nook and fire, but apple sold 55 million ipads through 2011, and around 13 million the first quarter, so nearly 70 million total.. I think we'd know if the nook and fire had sold enough to really balance that lead shown in _this_ study out.

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?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I have my Galaxy Tab hooked up to an iCade running MAME. I dig it! One of these days I'm gonna see if I can find an HDMI cable for the Tab so I can play the games on the big screen.

Re:Biased much?

[shutdown -p now]

The bad ones are sub $200, and the cheapest "surface" is going to be $399ish.

More like $599, if the recent links are correct.

Which is to say, exactly the same as iPad 32Gb (for Surface, 32Gb is the minimum you can get). Definitely not competing against budget tablets.

Re:Biased much?

[Eponymous Coward]

And the Android tablets are measurably bad, so there is hope for the Microsoft yet

There are already lots of Windows tablets out there. It seems that a lot of people believe Surface will succeed because it's a better fit for corporate needs than the iPad is. Well, the current crop of Windows 7 tablets (some of which are very nice) are a better fit for corporate needs than either the iPad or the Surface yet nobody is buying them. I do agree that the Android tablets have been pretty dismal, but I think that's mostly because there isn't much software for them. It's all about the developers and Microsoft isn't interesting to non-corporate developers any more (ie the people who are passionate about software are not passionate about Microsoft).

My prediction is that Surface will bomb and Microsoft will scrap it and have something even better planned for Q1 2014. It will be tied to the XBox brand rather than Windows.

warranty in case of bankruptcy?

[rbrausse]

not that I'm highlty interested in a playbook - but does RIM have a contingency plan for insolvency and still outstanding product warranties?

Re:warranty in case of bankruptcy?

[Lunix Nutcase]

Yes, it will all be nullified by the bankruptcy proceedings.

Re:warranty in case of bankruptcy?

[Lunix Nutcase]

Because their phones are clunky and offer nothing you can't get elsewhere. BES is not really a selling point these days.

Re:warranty in case of bankruptcy?

[poetmatt]

Classic innovator's dilemma + lack of willingness to take risk to compete. aka classic big corporation fear of risk = competitors jump in quickly and take over. RIM hasn't been competing in almost 7-10 years, even beyond android they were never competitive in comparison to phones such as motorola's line of Iden 7&8 series phones and the Nokia's before that. All they ever had was the checkbox of "enterprise friendly". which is now expected of all companies and no longer a selling point for RIM.
As a similar example - android, iphone and windows phone are more towards stagnant iterative changes than "amazing new developments" anymore. Polish vs real innovation. So I wouldn't be surprised to see new competition eventually comes in, even if it takes another 5 years.

Re:warranty in case of bankruptcy?

[Octorian]

They are using the "larger market" to sell more smartphones. The problem is that most of that market is outside of the US, and thus completely ignored by the US-centric press during their weekly rounds of RIM-bashing.

Re:warranty in case of bankruptcy?

[erroneus]

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: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.

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.

Re:It's possible

[Lunix Nutcase]

Free prostate exams?

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:It's possible

[Lunix Nutcase]

Sure, until it drives those OEMs out of business or forces them to sell their PC divisions because they can't make any money and 10s if not 100s of thousands of people get laid off in the process.

Re:It's possible

[nine-times]

I agree. I think that's part of where the Android tablet market has failed to steal Apple's thunder. Android makers keep trying to compete on price, saying, "Hey, we make something kind of like an iPad, but it's $100 instead of $500!"

And sure, there's a market for that. There are business applications, and I'm sure there are a bunch of happy Kindle Fire owners. On the other hand, they achieved that low price point by skimping on the hardware and design. The $100 Android tablet isn't as powerful and doesn't have as nice of a screen. The development team spent less time thinking about the ins and outs of the the design. It's simply not as nice of a device, and that's reflected both in media hype and sales.

If you want to beat Apple, make a better product.

Re:It's possible

[roman_mir]

You people don't understand money at all, it's not about any specific price, it's about the spread between all costs and the sales price. That's all there is. If the components, elements, labour costs are falling, then the price of the final product is falling.

It's not like any of these companies are operating at a loss, they are making money, but they are exactly what happens in free market - there are many competitors, they are really improving the quality of the product and finding ways to sell it at a lower price, but they are MAKING money, not losing it, that's because they find ways to bring down the cost of ALL components (including labour and taxes obviously), and it's all good for the people who are buying these products, they are the winners in this.

That's the problem with the governments and the belief system that it's all about jobs.

It's NOT all about jobs, we do NOT want jobs, we want the final product. Gov't causes prices to go up because of price fixing, rules like the minimum wage, destruction of competition, inflation.

The funny but also sad and stupid thing is that people have been led to believe that gov't somehow lowers the prices and creates more competition. Nothing can be further from the truth. The famous and completely wrong example is Standard Oil, it's famous, because it's almost the only example anybody has been taught at school, and it's wrong, because it's a great COUNTER example to this stupid idea. Standard Oil had over 150 competitors by 1911, it also became a large player from only having 4% of the market in 1969, but the way it did it is by increasing efficiencies.

Just like these hardware companies are lowering the sale prices, Standard Oil dropped the prices over their entire existence, from 30 cents per gallon of refined oil to 5.9 cents per gallon by 1899.

The gov't broke the economy of scale and allowed a bunch of losers to enter the market to 'compete', but in reality all it achieved was the prices for oil stopped falling. Gov't shouldn't be in business helping certain businesses against others, all while causing prices to go up.

From late 17 hundreds to 1913, prices in USA have been falling for consumer products, while quality, quantity, innovation, infrastructure, credit worthiness, standard of living and savings have been rising. ALL of this was achieved without gov't regulations, without income taxes, without the Fed and IRS.

The times when USA had busts in 19th century was when gov't did get involved, like with the printing of the Continental currency. Soon enough they'll be saying 'not worth a Federal'.

In any case, here is the point: nobody is losing money on selling all this hardware. These are not banks or car companies or houses, they are not propped up by the gov't, if they lose money, they'll go out of business.

They are making money on spreads, they push their costs down, that's how they compete - by providing more and more of their product to more and more population. That's why everybody has a cell phone today.

RIM isn't going out of business because of their prices. They are going out of business because of their inability to understand the market.

Re:It's possible

[jimicus]

Yeah but that company has the i-factor, this mysterious elixir that makes people get addicted to your meaningless electronic toy products as if they were crack.

Not true.

Apple have learned - and really taken to heart - a few home truths about selling products that most of the rest of the computer industry has sadly missed. The fact of the matter is that people are emotional creatures, and do not buy products for purely logical reasons. (They may invent logical reasons in their own mind after the fact to justify a purchase, but they sure as hell don't base the purchasing decision on it!).

If you make a list of reasons people may buy a product - and attach a greater profitability to each item in the list as you go on - the list goes in roughly this order:

  - Product/service - what the product or service is.
  - Benefits - how aspects of a product might provide some sort of benefit.
  - Results - the immediate result one might expect from the product.
  - Value - what value one might place on those results.
  - Emotional Value - how that value might have an emotional impact.

Note I said "value", not "price". Raw price on its own is actually a pretty bad selling point. You wouldn't think so, it doesn't make much logical sense - but people aren't all that logical. (They also have a short attention span, so unless you can get emotional value across within about ten or twenty seconds, you're wasting your time).

Now, go take a look at Apple's website - or indeed any of their TV ads. They show you the product and immediately demonstrate a result that people will tie some sort of emotional value to. They don't say "you can do video calls", they show a shot of someone calling their mum with FaceTime. They don't say "we have voice control", they show someone out jogging instructing the phone to play Daft Punk. The prospective customer is already thinking about how they'll use the feature to make their life easier before the advert's even finished playing. Each advert mentions perhaps one feature and assigns emotional value to it.

Most other high-tech companies don't even attempt to do this.

Re:It's possible

[jo_ham]

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!

Re:Still not interested

[TheNinjaroach]

since the Playbook requires a Blackberry phone for network connectivity.

Where in the world are you getting this??

Nice hardware. Blackberry OS - not so much.

[techstar25]

I recently had a chance to play with a Playbook. It's a great piece of hardware. It's a great machine for $169. If somebody could get Android 4 running on it, these things technically should outperform anything else in it's price class.

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.

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:Still not interested

[LaRoach]

When RIM launched the playbook it didn't have native email apps for security reasons. In order to use email and calendaring you had to own a blackberry and tether it or something like that. This lead to a lot of confusion on what it's internet capabilities actually were. See here for some details: http://crackberry.com/why-rim-launching-blackberry-playbook-without-native-email-client-and-why-may-or-may-not-matter-you

Nice hardware, shame about the apps

[s7uar7]

I bought a Playbook just before Christmas when the price dropped to £169 but have just bought an iPad to replace it. The PB hardware and OS are good, what killed it for me were the apps. There's no Kindle, Skype or Netflix, for example, and on the BB app store $1 = £1, so what apps there are felt pricey.

Re:Still not interested

[Octorian]

And if you don't have WiFi available, it can tether over Bluetooth to any device that supports Bluetooth tethering.

The only thing you need a BlackBerry phone for is "bridge", which is a feature that makes certain apps and data on a BlackBerry phone available via the PlayBook's UI.

Re:What OS support is available

[Octorian]

It currently runs the BlackBerry "Tablet OS", which is basically QNX 6.6 with a different UI layer on top. Its has very good multitasking, and yes, you can SSH into it.

Re:No.

[Tridus]

So all those people buying iPads that don't have any other Apple equipment are really just blind Apple fanboys?

Yeah, that must be it. It couldn't possibly because it happens to be a good device or something...

Re:Still not interested

[isaac]

It still doesn't have native BES connectivity. If it did, it might have actually sold.

Unfortunately, RIM decided they'd rather use it as a sales vehicle for their phones.

That didn't turn out so well.

The end.

I have one - and it rocks

[DG]

I got a 16Gb the first time they were deeply discounted.

It was a little buggy at first, but the OS2.0 update completely fixed that.

It's blazing fast, multitasks, plays Flash, is a decent form factor, and gets incredible battery life. And now it runs Android apps to (I ported Androku over to it to run my Soundbridge - easy)

For as much as people seem to love throwing rocks at RIM, the Playbook is a great product.

DG

What companies have failed to do with tablets

[Targon]

The problem for RIM has come from MANY sources when it comes to tablets. The first, that apps written for one Blackberry device do not automatically work on all Blackberry devices is a huge issue, and that makes it very difficult for developers and even consumers, because you never know if the app you want to use will work on your particular device. Now, tablet sales are almost directly in relation to how well the PHONES are selling, so the fact that RIM is having problems with their phone sales will also cause people not to bother buying the tablet.

Palm/HP had the same problem, where a lack of good advertising, combined with a low consumer mindshare for the webOS phones meant that people were not running out to by a Touchpad until the price came down to the $200 range. The $200 and under range is where people are willing to spend the money on a tablet without being concerned about apps and such, while a $400+ price means people need to WANT one before they spend the money.

There is one other issue that the tablet market has, the price of a normal laptop. If you can get a fully functional laptop running Windows 7 for $400, then why buy a tablet for $500 or more that in general won't be as functional? Reading books would go to the Kindle, or long battery life would be the big reasons, but what if you are not sure that a given product will do what you want it to do? This is where advertising, but also the need to generate HYPE for a product is needed, but prices really do seem a bit inflated in the tablet market, and that is the problem. Companies that want to compete with Apple need to be willing and able to sell products at virtually zero profit for three to five years to get enough market presence to increase prices. Sell tablets for $200, or offer financing to get the price down that people need to spend, and people will buy.

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.