After a long wait, Research in Motion announced Tuesday morning pricing for its PlayBook tablet identical to Apple’s iPad 2. The 16GB Wi-Fi version is $499 32 GB costing $599 and a 64GB model priced at $699. RIM’s tablet hits U.S. and Canadian Best Buy stores April 19.
“Previews of the BlackBerry PlayBook have generated tremendous excitement and we know that customers are eager to get their hands on one,” Craig McLennan, Regional Managing Director, North America, Research In Motion, said in an announcement.
The device boasts a 7-inch screen, 1 GHz processor and RIM’s BlackBerry Tablet OS. Earlier this year, RBC Capital analyst Mike Abramsky predicted RIM could sell 4 million PlayBooks during the remainder of 2011. The key demographics are early adopters and power users seeking speed and security.
[Barron’s]
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
18 responses to “RIM PlayBook Pricetag to Mirror iPad 2 – But Will the Features?”
is 64gb really needed in a tablet?
Android tablet makers take note – it IS possible to complete with Apple on price, rather than charging $200-$300 more …
Do you still need a Blackberry for the thing to even get your mail for you?
Although it may be the same price, it is also about half the size.
These manufacturers already live off small margins so that isn’t the issue. What is more likely is that:
1. RIM has some sense of how much businesses will order.
2. RIM is taking a gamble that it will sell x units this year (in a nascent market) and is ordering at a higher volume than Android OEMs which will help lower costs. For smaller companies like Motorola it is a much bigger gamble.
3. Since the screen size is much smaller (less than half the size of the iPad) it probably won’t cost as much.
4. RIM is willing to take a smaller margins than Android OEMs in order to get market penetration.
Sure but the screen size is only 45 % as large – you need to be able to play games like SUshi Backgammon at the size of the ipads screen or just use your phone.
I like the Sushi Backgammon experience on the iPad most.
Android tablet makers take note – you can’t compete. On price. On profitability. On ecosystem. On UI. On ease of use. On software / hardware integration. And most importantly, on customer satisfaction. Especially well informed consumers. (You can fool some of the people some of the time…)
RIM is delusional at best.
7″ at the same price as the iPad? Yea, fail…