Last month Best Buy appeared to be complaining that its stockrooms were full of unsold Hewlett-Packard TouchPads. A few days later HP announced it was ending tablet and smartphone production. The price of the TouchPad was then slashed to virtually nothing, resulting in the devices flying off the shelves in a matter of hours.
Could it be that all the space taken up the TouchPads has now been filled with similarly slow-selling BlackBerry PlayBooks? The reason we’re suggesting this is because on Thursday Best Buy knocked $150 off the cost of the 64GB version in a sale, bringing it down to $550 from a hefty $700. It’s not clear how long the sale will last.
The 16GB and 32GB versions have been discounted too, by $50, giving them price tags of $450 and $550 respectively. But that’s a little confusing, isn’t it? The 32GB PlayBook is now at the same price as the 64GB device – $550. It’s hard to believe there’s anyone out there who might say, “I really do not want that much memory in my tablet. I’ll take the 32GB version.”
Research In Motion’s PlayBook has had something of a rough ride since its launch in April this year. Reviews have been mixed, while just a month after appearing on shelves, almost 1,000 of the tablets had to be recalled due to unspecified faulty hardware issues.
The Canadian company has also been having a hard time persuading networks to carry the device. Just last month Sprint announced that it was scrapping plans to bring the 4G PlayBook to its network. It is currently with no major US carriers.
RIM will be hoping the sale price will shift a few more of the devices. And Best Buy will certainly be happy to have some more stockroom space available.
