Well, if you were hoping to snag a BlackBerry PlayBook on the cheap, it looks like now’s the time to act. In what seems like a move born of desperation, all models of the PlayBook are now going for $299 on RIM’s online store.
Previous PlayBook sales have set the beginning price point at $199 for the 16GB model, but this time you’ll be able to purchase a 64GB PlayBook for the same price as a 16GB model. Not too shabby, especially if you didn’t jump on a local truckstop special.
Of course, that supposes that there are enough of them to go around — with every variant sporting the same price tag, I expect RIM to sell though their 64GB PlayBooks before long.
RIM is no stranger to PlayBook price cuts, but this new promotion is slated to run through the beginning of February, which would make it one of the longest, most drastic price cuts in the tablet’s troubled history. With PlayBook OS 2.0 scheduled to hit devices sometime next month, it could be a ploy to move units into people’s hands ahead of the update.
Then again, RIM’s most recent earnings statement shows that the audience for the PlayBook is slowly dying, with shipments slowing considerably throughout 2011. It’s beginning to look like the only way people will buy one of these things is with some hefty discounts involved, which doesn’t exactly bode well for RIM’s financial position. Still, their loss is your gain — the PlayBook is a flawed tablet to be sure, but this is a solid deal if you’re already stuck using a BlackBerry.