Will RIM Slash Prices for the PlayBook Tablet?

Research in Motion delivered the bad news about a bad quarter Thursday and the most troubling might have been that the company sold about half a million fewer of its BlackBerry PlayBook tablets than expected.


That's naturally leading to speculation that RIM may be preparing to follow Hewlett-Packard's recent example and slash prices for its PlayBooks in an attempt to dump inventory.


Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis said in the company's earnings call that RIM would be offering rebates and deals on PlayBooks, as well as starting an incentive program for business customers in an effort to jump-start sales of the tablet. CNET's Roger Cheng interpreted that to mean price cuts and few would be surprised if that's the case.


In its own online store, RIM's PlayBooks start at $ 499 for the 16GB model, while the 32GB tablet is $ 599, and the 64GB version is $ 699.


Those prices align precisely with Apple's prices for its Wi-Fi-only iPad 2 tablets. The difference, of course, is that Apple reported selling 9.25 million iPad 2 units in its most recent quarter. That's actual sales to end-users, not just shipments like the 200,000 PlayBooks that RIM said it pushed into inventory in its recently concluded second quarter.


When it comes to unit sales or even shipments, RIM is clearly on the wrong side of the decimal point in comparison to the tablet market leader, but then Apple sold 100,000 more of its first-generation iPads on the very first day they were released in 2010 than RIM shipped PlayBooks in the past 90 days. And keep in mind, Apple did this in a market where consumers didn't even know they wanted tablets yet.


It's easy to pick on RIM, but the smartphone maker is hardly the only tablet-maker that looks puny next to Apple. The lead RIM may be forced to follow is HP's, which first slashed prices for its webOS-based TouchPad before dropping the bomb that it was discontinuing the product line and then holding a fire sale on the tablets.


Unlike HP, RIM is holding out hope (at least publicly) that it can weather the tough times and get PlayBook sales rolling. RIM said Thursday that it's planning a software update for the tablet that will make it more appealing.


How deep would a price cut for PlayBooks need to be? Retail partner Best Buy recently offered a $ 150 discount on the PlayBook, but that was a special Labor Day promotion.


The way things are going for RIM, something like that might have to be made permanent.


UPDATE:This article originally stated that the PlayBook runs the BlackBerry OS. In fact it runs RIM's BlackBerry Tablet OS, which is based on the QNX operating system.