BlackBerry PlayBook at cut-rate price for staff

Signs that RIM has been growing increasingly eager to clear out BlackBerry PlayBooks grew on Monday with an apparent leak detailing an employee sale. Already cut to $199, the 16GB tablet is understood by multiple The Verge contacts to be selling at just $99 for RIM staff. Price drops are believed even steeper on the 32GB and 64GB models, which should cost just $149 and $199.

The Waterloo company is also applying only a light restriction to prevent mass re-sales, letting each worker order as many as eight each. It's unknown how long the sale will last, and RIM hasn't publicly confirmed the deal.

Such prices are near certain to be well below cost and are low even for employee purchase programs. Combined with the public sale ending this week, enterprise bonuses, and the brief exit from Best Buy, questions have been raised as to whether the discounts have been just a short-term discount or whether it's part of a more determined clearance.

After shipping a lower-than-expected 500,000 PlayBooks in the device's launch quarter, RIM ended up shipping less than half as many in the summer, prompting a flurry of discounts. It had little success with a price drop from the original $500 to $300 and is now helped mostly by having a cost similar to the stripped-down Kindle Fire, where the sheer price gap between the PlayBook and the iPad has made a more convincing case for alternatives to Apple.

By Electronista Staff