Research In Motion’s debut tablet hasn’t bowled people over like the company had hoped, and now it is pushing a huge sale in hopes of drumming up interest during the holiday shopping season. For a limited time through participating retailers, RIM is offering its BlackBerry PlayBook slate for $300 below MSRP, representing savings of up to 60%. Sale pricing comes in at $199.99 for the 16GB model, $299 for the 32GB version and $399 for the 64GB model, and participating retailers include Best Buy, Walmart RadioShack and more.
After selling 500,000 PlayBooks into channels during the tablet’s first quarter of availability, RIM sold just 200,000 units to distributors last quarter. Analyst checks indicate that sell-through is stalling as well, so a huge sale like this could be a last hurrah for the tablet. Users might enjoy the PlayBook if they give it a test drive, but a lack of apps, no PIM or email support and a lack of compelling features compared to the competition have kept the ball in Apple and Google’s court. Now, with a $199 Kindle Fire and $249 Nook Tablet having been released, the PlayBook’s odds drop even lower.
