It is being reported that during the last quarter Research In Motion may have shipped just one of its PlayBook tablet computers for every nineteen iPads sold by Apple. This comes as a big blow for the Canadian BlackBerry manufacturer who had counted on its only tablet device to improve its performance in the quarter. RIM will report its financial results tomorrow, and it has been stated that the company sold a total of 490,000 PlayBooks tablets in the first quarter, whereas the number of iPads shipped during the same time approached an astounding 9.25 million.
Analysts have resultantly decreased their outlook for the QNX tablet’s shipments for this year to around 2.2 million. One of the analysts named Charlie Wolf said that RIM expected too much out of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet in terms of its sales prospects for the year. He said that this indicates that the Canadian company’s future hopes now rest solely on the next generation QNX based BlackBerry smartphones.
When RIM first announced its plans to manufacture a tablet last year, most analysts had expressed their hopes that the device could potentially give rise to an all new category of products. However, the 7 inch tablet was not released in the market till the month of April this year, a year after the release of similar rival devices such as the Apple iPad 2 and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. And even after it came out in the market, the tablet was widely criticized for not offering instant messaging services or dedicated email applications and a shortage of applications for the platform.
Another analyst who works for Canaccord Genuity Ltd. said that the company is expected to ship around 1.5 million tablets during the year, whereas Apple and Samsung are expected to sell 39.2 million and 7 million of their own tablets respectively. He said that even as RIM has not yet given up hope for the PlayBook, the tablet has quite evidently gotten off to a slow start which potentially creates a huge pressure on the upcoming smartphones from the manufacturer.
A RIM spokeswoman named Jamie Ernst said that there will be no comment from the company before it announces its quarterly earnings. It is anticipated that the company based in Waterloo, Ontario is going to report a revenue decline for the first time in the last nine years when its financial results comes out tomorrow.
September 15, 2011 at 9:18 am
It hilarious how the Android loving bloggers try to link the Galaxy Tab with the iPad as if they BOTH are responsible for the the Playbook’s tepid reception…..