The Blackberry Playbook is perhaps the best case study in the tech industry where an old giant makes a big swing and falls. I have been very critical of RIM and its tablet hype that ended with millions in losses for the Canadian company. But RIM is making its moves, a bit late, but they are. The Playbook has received its OS 2.0 upgrade and honestly, given the tablet market, nothing except the iPad 2 has really got traction, in such a scenario, the Playbook with a decent OS upgrade and steep price cut does become lucrative. I have been recommending the to friends and family at the price of Rs 12,500 in India.
RIM has tweeted out that the Playbook emerged as the best seller at Future Shop (Best Buy, Canada) this week. While this could be for a variety of reasons, including the fact that iPad 3 launch news reducing the sales of iPad 2, we have to give it to Blackberry that they have stuck with the Playbook and are pushing upgrades.
With OS 2.0, a native email client and support for Android apps come in. Selling for $199 in west, the Playbook is affordable. Less than half the price of an entry-level iPad 2 and thus not surprising if a certain segment of the market invests in the Playbook. The QNX based BB OS gets a boost of users due to the Playbook fire-sale and unlike HP, Blackberry is not abandoning the platform.
iPad 2 vs Playbook perspective may be the wrong way to look at this situation, perhaps when Blackberry ships a more mature 10″ tablet, the comparison with the market leader could be fair. But for now, at this price point, Blackberry may be taking a loss, but consumers have a good hardware + software combo.