First day BlackBerry PlayBook sales may have exceeded expectations

By on Apr 20, 2011 at 10:42 AM
Tablets April 20, 2011

Amid multiple reports to the contrary, RBC Capital Markets General Manager Mike Abramsky on Wednesday said first day PlayBook sales likely exceeded analysts’ expectations. In a note to investors, Abramsky states that RIM may have moved about 50,000 PlayBook tablets on launch day alone, including pre-order sales. The analyst and his team placed calls to 70 different Best Buy, Staples and RadioShack locations to inquire about PlayBook sales performance on launch day. Reported performance ranged from light sales in some locations to sell-outs, which occurred at 11% of the stores RBC polled. RBC also used Best Buy’s online inventory tool to check stock at 180 additional locations in 10 major U.S. cities, and found that the 16GB PlayBook is unavailable at 13% of stores, the 32GB model is unavailable at 87% of stores and the 64GB model is unavailable at 91% of the locations viewed. As preliminary inventory quantities for these stores is currently unknown, this information is of little use since many stores might not have received higher-capacity PlayBook models to begin with. Finally, Abramsky notes that the PlayBook may have outperformed first-day sales of Motorola’s XOOM and even Samsung’s popular Galaxy Tab, and he believes RIM is on track to sell 500,000 PlayBook tablets in its first quarter of availability.

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  • Max

    All the BB Morons in the world won’t keep this brick afloat. Too small to be useful. Too big to be portable. It won’t even fit into the pockets of your 40w/28L carharrts, morons. I swear the Amiga had better graphics than this turd does in 2011.

    • Tony

      Stop being such a vag. (If your not sure what that is Max, if you have an iPhone its that thing girls have you think is icky, if your running Android you probably spend most of your days and nights either staring at pictures of it online or “accidentally” walking in on your sister while shes changing so you know what it is)

    • Bobdonhim

      Obviously you have never seen one. The graphics are 10000000x better than the iPad. You have a serious problem with RIM…did you not get hired the 30 times you applied?

      • PN009

        Now thats a good one!

    • PN009

      40w/28L carharrts ???? wtf are u ? a fashion fetishist? 28L – u pygmy u……….

      • Max

        I’m wearing my True Religion. 32W 34L. Reading comprehension FTL. But hey, what do you expect out of a salesbot BB Moron sitting in Starbucks waiting for his marching orders from his manager before driving away in his Chevy Malibu.

    • Anonymous

      you realize that it has better graphics than the xoom and ipad2 right? you should know your facts before you post senseless dribble.

      • PN009

        Oh didnt you see? He posted facts he KNEW – his pant size !!

  • Anonymous

    Really!?! The stuff people will spend money on is just mind boggling.

  • Nexus Guy

    This is a great device, well designed. I picked one up yesterday. It may lack some of the basics, but in due time it will be a major player in the tablet world.

  • Anonymous

    Summary:
    analyst issues report saying that he made some phone calls and has no useful data.

  • Anonymous

    Yuck Yuck, have to laugh at all the people on here mumbling like grumpy old men, “Still Crappy I say Still crappy!”

    If you think it’s crappy don’t buy, I got one and I think it’s great. Not enough Apps for sure but my God the thing is a day old. Remember the iPad on day 1?

    Once again RIM beats expectations… nothing new in that, they always do.

  • Anonymous

    Was just talking to my friend about it. Neither of us cared for the way the UI looked (just personal taste), but because it was RIM,, there was a good chance this would get a big enterprise integration.

  • dwinsmith

    My local Best Buy almost sold out but they only had two to begin with. Selling out is not an inication of sales. Did they actually check if they had more than one in the first place.

  • Anonymous

    Bought Playbook last night and love. So who gives a F@#@ what you IPAD/Android fan-boy’s say, it’s a great tablet and it will just get better and better.

  • Kashifkhan65

    Because calling 70 locations is sooooo accurate …..

    Zach (the dude that wrote this article) needs to get a life and write better articles with more informed sources.

    Your other post about about t-bolts outselling iPhones was also complete crap…..

  • Shnork

    Good article. Use some common sense people. iPads were available in a little over 200 stores in north american and none online for a month. The Playbook was available in over 20,000 stores Apr 19 as well as delivery that day from online sales. I received mine at 9 am. Like one store manager said, they didn’t expect huge lines because it was available everywhere to anyone. Sure, if a store only receives 5 and they sell out it’s not a big deal. However, if 20,000 stores receive 5 and they sell out it’s a bigger deal, especially when you count online sales.

    Kido2050 is right, they always deliver so who cares what anyone thinkgs. Obviously enough people like them that sales are better-than-expected. Certainly better than the what the DOA idiots were calling for.

    I showed my iFan colleague the Playbook and he was blown away by the video and sound quality.

  • http://profiles.google.com/kennethlmoore Ken Moore

    Ok 60 days from now RIM will release an OTA software update adding Native email, Calendar, BBM and who knows what else. Android apps as well as Blackberry native apps will be available in the summer (its already May basically). What will you guys who are disputing the OS talk about then? How it doesn’t fit into your purse? I’m just saying…lets be real here, all the negative talking points are just about temp issues that are easily solved. C’mon, if you step back from it all, most people I think would agree Playbook becomes a really compelling product once these things happen. Can’t another product have success in Apple’s playland? (I have an Ipad by the way)

  • JMD

    Wow! When I went to Best Buy (in Northern VA) to check out the Playbook,..I noticed that RIM had a bonafide Blackberry Girl assisting folks with the Playbook. Imagine that….A live Playbook Assistant on launch day! JMD

  • Todd

    I love my PlayBook. Awesome screen, quick, great BB integration, super camera. The best thing is that it’s just going to get better!

  • Lolrim

    lol playbook.

    this device fails right out the door, maybe failbook 2 might have a chance but not before we see a white version of this doa device.

    do you people really expect any significant updates then what you have already ? storm then storm 2, torch now torch 2.

    … gg rim well played.

    • Anonymous

      Geez, give it up already. The thing sold more than you ever imagined but you just can’t let it rest. Relax, you’re going to pop an aneurism.

    • Martin

      Can you tell me how it fails? Is it one of those “if you dont have an ipad, you dont have an ipad” things?

  • Anonymous

    500000? Bs…

  • Yoyo

    …………….People bought these???

    That’s it i give up, i will never understand what people see in RIM.

    • Martin

      So um, in your opinion, whats wrong with this device? Or are you just talkin out of your ass?

      • Anonymous

        just shut up and go to bed. you need to be in the office in waterloo shortly after 9 tomorrow morning.

      • Yoyo

        Having dealt with RIM products for nearly 2 years i can’t see the appeal

        They’re slow, sluggish, ugly looking, pathetic hardware, mediocre OS, lack many basic features, incapable of doing simple tasks and just overall suck and yet people still buy there products, like i said i don’t get the appeal and considering i been working with them for nearly 2 years i probably never will.

  • Anonymous

    It is actually fairly respectable sales. My company launched a new product yesterday and we only sold 74 copies. Though it isnt a tablet and original projections were 1,000 copies a year.

    If there wasn’t an iPad in the equation everyone would look at 50,000 units as a great day.

  • dgary8

    This is just my opinion, based on history.
    Many years ago Rim created a cell phone with a physical keyboard, it was never before considered.
    It was far from perfect, but it’s priorities were right on. With some software improvements and updates the cell phone industry was changed forever. Now we had smartphones. Many other companies began to develop phones and improve on that philosphy.
    The Playbook is now positioned to be able to change the course of tablets in the same way.
    If you want something that you and your children can play with, you have that option today…
    If you want something to be productive, and actually use as a tool to assist you in your mature responsibilities as an adult needing reliable electronics, you will witness the development of that tool just as you did with the original Blackberry Smartphone…

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