BlackBerry Tablet Promotions Get Underway

By Joseph Palenchar -- TWICE, 9/29/2011

Waterloo, Canada - Research In Motion's plans to drive sellthrough of its PlayBook in the fall have begun to kick in, with Best Buy reducing its advertised prices of PlayBooks by $200.

The Best Buy price move is part of a RIM promotion program previously said by RIM to be coming in the fall "to drive sell-through and increased adoption of the BlackBerry PlayBook," a spokesperson told TWICE.

"We are already starting to see some of these promotions being implemented in the form of instant rebates and gift cards within the consumer channel," she said. RIM expects these promotions to continue into the holiday season.

The PlayBook, she continued, "has established itself as a high-performance tablet, and we are confident that these activities, along with the upcoming software upgrade, BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0, will help to generate an increase in demand and sell through of the BlackBerry PlayBook over the upcoming months.

At Best Buy, the PlayBook's pricing has been reduced to $299 for the 16GB version, to $399 for the 32 GB version, and $499 for the 64GB version.