Roh no! Say it ain’t so. Honestly, I can’t see this rumour being true. During their Q2 results a couple weeks ago RIM announced they had shipped 200,000 BlackBerry PlayBook tablets, taking the combined number to 700,000. Certainly not the number they were hoping for and not what analysts predicted. Over the past few days the PlayBook has seen a steady decrease in price points, plus reports indicated that Quanta, the company manufacturers the PlayBook, has laid off employees and reduced its production. Today, thanks to analyst John Vinh from Collins Stewart says RIM has completely “halted production” and also “canceled development of additional tablet projects”.
According to a post in BGR, the reports states that “Collins Stewart analyst John Vinh made the claims in a note to investors Thursday morning, citing anonymous sources at RIM’s manufacturing partner Quanta. “While Quanta last week acknowledged that it had laid off a significant number of production workers from a factory focused on producing the PlayBook, our research indicates that the ODM has essentially halted production of the tablet, Vinh wrote. “Additionally, our due diligence indicates that RIMM has canceled development of additional tablet projects.”
RIM has invested so much time/money/energy into the QNX platform and are basing their entire smartphone/tablet future on it. Can you see this happening?
Hopefully RIM addresses the rumour.
Update: Well that didn’t take long. Good for RIM. According to the WSJ who received and email from RIM, they have apparently denied the rumour stating that it’s “pure fiction” and that RIM “remains highly committed to the tablet market”.
