Price slash kicks PlayBook up to 15% of Canadian tablets
updated 03:45 pm EST, Wed February 15, 2012
BlackBerry PlayBook sees Kindle Fire effect
RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook may have seen the same effect on tablet share in Canada as its close cousin the Kindle Fire did in the US, Solutions Research Group said Wednesday. Having had as little as five percent in the fall, it's now estimated to be up to 15 percent of tablets in its home country through the price cut to $200. The shift would have dropped the iPad's share from 86 percent to 68 percent, the Globe and Mail was told.
The remaining split hasn't been detailed, although it left just 17 percent to Android and every other mobile platform.
RIM had a similar price cut in the US, but the drop didn't have the same effect as in the US given Amazon's better brand recognition and deeper content ecosystem.
Solutions Research Group president Kaan Yigit, in presenting the data, made the gamble that the PlayBook sales were signs that smaller tablets were suddenly popular. A larger tablet like the iPad wouldn't fit in a purse or jacket, making it "completely misguided" for Apple not to go smaller, the analyst claimed.
The statements appeared to ignore the causation of the sales spike. Both the Kindle Fire and PlayBook sales spikes have been widely attributed to pricing set so low that they sell at a loss, not the size. Regular seven-inch tablets that are priced to profit, such as Acer's Iconia Tab A100, Samsung's Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus, and Toshiba's Thrive 7, have usually sold at much lower rates.
TAGS :
gadgets, Google, Toshiba, Acer, Android, BlackBerry, Samsung, RIM, Apple, iPad, Galaxy Tab, PlayBook, Iconia Tab, Thrive
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Nov 2008
Klueless Kaan
It is par for the course that another clueless analyst shoots his company in the foot with statements like these that fail to take into account the fire sale prices that the Playbook has just to get rid of stock.