Beleaguered “Research In Motion today said that it plans to let its low-end PlayBook tablet die off. Though the company will continue to sell PlayBooks, the 16GB version won’t be available once current inventories run out,” Eric Zeman reports for Informationweek. “‘RIM will no longer be making the 16GB model of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet,’ the company said in a statement. ‘The 16GB PlayBook will continue to be available for distributors and retailers while quantities last. We continue to remain committed to the tablet space and the 32GB and 64GB models of the BlackBerry PlayBook continue to be available from our distributors and retailers around the world. There is more value for our customers in the higher capacity models (32GB, 64GB), and as such we have decided to focus our efforts here.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Amateur hour. You do not issue statements about discontinuing models, you just discontinue them. These idiots are unnecessarily — but truthfully, at least — giving the impression that PlayBook is a dead end product.
Zeman reports, “RIM’s efforts in the tablet space have been anything but successful. Total sales of the PlayBook aren’t known with certainty, but they are well below those of Apple’s iPad, which has sold in the tens of millions. Estimates of PlayBook sales are less than two million in the 14 months that the tablet has been available.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Let’s see, 1/3 of the PlayBook line is now dead, so Amateur Hour only has about 40 minutes left.
Related articles:
More blood on Apple iPad’s touchscreen: Fusion Garage disappears – December 19, 2011
More blood on Apple iPad’s touchscreen: Dell kills Streak 7, backs out of Android tablets in US – December 5, 2011
More blood on Apple iPad’s touchscreen: Sharp pulls plug on main ‘Galapagos’ tablets – September 15, 2011
More blood on Apple iPad’s touchscreen: Dell’s Streak 5 tablet is dead – August 12, 2011
More blood on Apple iPad’s touchscreen: Plastic Logic abandons e-reader – August 11, 2010
Apple’s iPad has blood on its touchscreen: eReader-maker iRex files for bankruptcy – June 11, 2010
Poof! RIM’s vaporous Android-powered tablet evaporates – May 05, 2010
Poof! Microsoft’s vaporous ‘Courier’ slate PC evaporates – April 29, 2010
Poof! HP’s vaporous slate PC evaporates – April 28, 2010
Apple launches iPad; revolutionary device starts at $499 – January 27, 2010