RIM slashes price of PlayBook tablets to $299 in US
Shifting inventory
For many 2011 was going to be the year of the tablet.
Unless you were Apple, however, it was the year of sub-$200 tablet; something proved in HP's TouchPad firesale, and more coherently via the success of Amazon's Kindle Fire.
So where for RIM and its solid but overpriced BlackBerry PlayBook?
The only way is down - at least in terms of the price.
An impulse purchase?So, given that RIM's already taken a $485 million write down in terms of inventory provision due to weak sales, it's decided to slash prices across the board.
This sees the price of all PlayBooks bought in North America cut from between $500 - $700 depending on capacity (16GB - 64GB) down to $299.
Pricing outside of North America is less advantageous, however, ranging from £249 - £409 in the UK, while there doesn't appear to be any sale for continental Europe or Australasia.
The US sale is due to end 4 February, or presumably while stocks last.
[source: RIM]
