Price cuts give BlackBerry PlayBook 15% of Canadian market

Up north in Canada, where the weather this time of the year is bone-chilling cold, the BlackBerry PlayBook is actually hot. In RIM's own backyard, the BlackBerry tablet has seen its share of the tablet market triple since last fall to a 15% share. So what is driving these sales? The various price cuts on the PlayBook that have made the much maligned device more popular in Canada and soon the tablet will receive a long awaited firmware update. Solutions Research Group conducted the survey of 1,000 Canadians and while that does seem like a rather small sample size, the stats were extrapolated to show the tablet's 15% share.

We have seen the BlackBerry PlayBook go in the States for as low as $199 during the holidays. Besides the price cuts, there is speculation that the BlackBerry PlayBook 2.0 OS update will be rolled out this Friday and will allegedly allow the BlackBerry Bridge to let you use gestures on your BlackBerry smartphone to control the tablet. The update is also supposed to add a social calendar to the PlayBook among other things. Despite the pick up in Canadian sales, RIM still announced a $485 million charge to its earnings for the December quarter as the company wrote down the value of its unsold PlayBook inventory.

Marketshare increases do not happen in a vacuum. SRG shows that during the same time period that saw the increase in BlackBerry PlayBook sales, the marketshare of the Apple iPhone dropped from 86% to 68%, still tops in the country. SRG president Kaan Yigit said that while the Apple iPad is great at home, it is not pocket or jacket friendly like the BlackBerry PlayBook is with its smaller 7 inch screen. Since the Apple iPad has a 9.7 screen, Yigit said Apple should produce a version of its tablet with a smaller screen, something that has recently been the subject of speculation.

source: TheGlobeandMail via BlackBerryOS