The poor sales of the Blackberry Playbook have caused its creator, Research in Motion, to take a big one time loss due to unsold inventory levels of the tablet. The company announced today that during its current fiscal third quarter, it will take a big $485 million one time charge ($360 million after taxes) as a result of RIM's decision to write down the cost of the Playbook.
Launched in April, the company failed to generate a lot of sales for the seven inch tablet device, despite a big promotional push. Last week, the company officially announced that it was cutting the price of the Playbook "for a limited time" down to $199 for the 16 GB version compared to its original price of $499.
That slashing of the Playbook's price point seems to have done the trick. Retailer Best Buy announced this week that it has sold out of its Playbook units and plans to get more tablets from RIM. RIM said today that "the Company has seen a significant increase in demand for the PlayBook" thanks to the new price structure.
In its press release today, RIM repeated that it will continue to support and update the Playbook, saying, "We look forward to continuing to grow the installed base of PlayBook users and to attracting more and more developers to expand the volume of applications, content and services that leverage the power of the industry leading QNX-based platform." RIM is currently planning to update the Playbook's operating system to its 2.0 version in February 2012.
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