First Sprint canceled the PlayBook 4G. On Thursday, Best Buy took $150 off the price of the RIM PlayBook tablet with 64 Gbytes of memory.
The Best Buy deal is a far cry from the $99 HP TouchPad fire sale that captivated the technology industry in late August. The new, discounted price of the 64-Gbyte PlayBook is $549.99, $50 above the price of the 32-Gbyte TouchPad that HP discounted on August 10.
The discount means that Best Buy is now selling the 64-Gbyte and 32-Gbyte versions of the TouchPad for the same price, or $549.99. Best Buy has discounted the 32-Gbyte version for $50 off of the list price. The 16-Gbyte model is still priced at $449.99, with no discount.
Following the TouchPad debacle, RIM’s PlayBook appears to be significantly overpriced, as the buyers turn to good, cheap tablets. The PlayBook is still less expensive than the 32-Gbyte Wi-Fi-only iPad, however, at $599.99. Hewlett-Packard has also said that it will make one final batch of HP Touchpads, apparently to soak up additional components from its upstream suppliers.
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RIM hasn’t had the greatest summer; the once-ballyhooed PlayBook tablet has been a disappointment for the company. Nevertheless, the company actually shipped 500,000 PlayBook tablets in the quarter (and the PlayBook wasn’t even on sale for a good chunk of it), which was roughly 150,000 more units than some analysts were predicting.
In April, PCMag gave the PlayBook just 2.5 stars out of 5, basically because the tablet wasn’t fully baked. Its most egregious omission was native email, which RIM said it would add later. (Native email was demoed in May.
“The updates may be on the way, but until they’re here, we have to rate the PlayBook based on what we’ve seen,” reviewer Tim Gideon wrote. “It handles some tasks gracefully, but currently lacks the features and functionality of the iPad 2 and Google Honeycomb tablets, so it’s difficult to recommend right now.”
Copyright © 2010 Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc.