RIM Takes $485M Hit Over Unsold PlayBook Tablets

Amateur hour really <i>is</i> over:<p><a href="http://blogs-images.forbes.com/marcwebertobias/files/2011/05/playbook_4_400.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://blogs-images.forbes.com/marcwebertobias/files/2011/05...</a><p>Amateurs could not possibly lose a half a billion dollars competing head-on with a juggernaut and ignoring the obvious time and time again.<p>UPDATE: Enough snark. Here’s my post-moretm: They drank their own kool-aid. Every single thing about it strikes me as the work of a team trying to sell to their management rather than to the market. Or, the work of a team that was only allowed to build what their management wanted to succeed rather than what the market would reward with success.<p>Their advertising brags and boast of how awesome it is, but nobody who actually talks to customers would believe that this is true or believable. Management, on the other hand, might believe it is awesome if they were reading the ad copy while looking at some incomprehensible PowerPoint with fancy graphics.<p>Their choice of technologies and features hits the sweet spot of what the company is prepared to fund rather than what customers are prepared to buy.<p>The whole thing seems inward-facing, a little like certain start-ups that are buzzword compliant because that’s what VCs want to fund rather than because that’s what markets want to buy.

"Despite its troubles, the PlayBook is not going anywhere, RIM said."<p>If that's a direct quote, it's an unfortunate choice of words.

RIM's primary distribution channel is now proving to be more a barrier than once thought. The sell-through approach using the Carriers as primary is horrible. Carriers will promote and sell what is profitable and buzzing. In recent weeks RIM has alllowed employees to purchase Playbook internally at a discounted price (discount becomes taxable income). I know employees who have purchased upwards of 20 devices for friends and families. It makes me wonder, what if they were to open this up for all their devices? What if they'd done this 3 years ago? Sure it would eat into their profit margins but it would definitely increase market share and create stickiness (aka Crackberry).

I own a Playbook and it's really, really a nice device. It's fast, browsing is convenient, it can multi tasks, the form factor is better than the iPad and it can be used as a mass storage on my PC. I've played with the iPad, the iPad2 and the Samsung Galaxy but I prefer the PlayBook.<p>The big problem: no apps.

Isn't it the Playbook that still can't check email, contacts, or a calendar without being tethered to a Blackberry? I could have told you day one that was going fail, doubly so if they were expecting their main customers to be enterprises. "Hold on, let me plug my phone into my tablet to check my schedule...wait, why do I have this tablet again?"<p>Hopefully they dump their CEO(s) and get someone who understands the current and rapidly changing mobile and tablet markets. If not, RIMs days are numbered.

Given the people who bought Blackberries, it would seem like an ARM-based netbook with a really awesome keyboard and 3G would have been a better idea for a first step outside the cellphone market. It really seems like the Storm and Playbook were me-toos instead of looking at what makes RIM great and pushing that.

"...we believe the PlayBook, which will be further enhanced with the upcoming PlayBook OS 2.0 software, is a compelling tablet for consumers that also offers unique security and manageability features for the enterprise."<p>The device is named a "PlayBook" yet they're targeting the enterprise market. That seems wrong. Did they start by targeting general consumers then shift their target market without changing the device's name?<p>At least RIM is sticking to their guns and forging ahead with the device, unlike the wishy-washy maybe-we-will-maybe-we-won't emanating from HP regarding webOS.

They have nobody to blame but themselves. They shipped the tablet too early and without fully finishing it. Why should I need to own a BlackBerry in order to utilize something as simple as email or BBM? Sure, it's a tablet that's meant to be integrated with your smartphone but I should be able to buy it as a standalone product as well. The only thing that can save them now is to abandon the PlayBook and do a completely <i>new</i> tablet that can actually gain tablet market share.

It's called skating to where the puck was.

Given RIM's atrocious performance and the fact they've been hemmorhaging customers for a long while, where's the shareholder revolt? The board might not see the obvious, but surely the investors in RIM can see that when a company loses some 80% of it's value, something needs to change.

Did anyone who owns an IPhone or Android smart phone decide to buy a Playbook? I still can't believe RIM insists on stick to their own OS rather than building their features onto android, joining that ecosystem, and putting out quality hardware.

A coworker had a playbook. He said he "was _not_ disappointed". The selling feature was that the OS looked like OSX, as opposed to "the usual crappy android UI".<p>He didn't really have an answer for why he didn't just get an iPad if he wants something like OSX on it.

I'd buy one for US$ 50, tops. ;-)

Lower the price by 40% and all the problems will be resolved.

Ya lower prices. Make it like 99 dollars or something and it will sell like hotcakes. Or hell even cheaper.