RIM is having a Playbook fire sale in the US, slashing the prices of all three capacities to $US299. But that hasn’t translated to Aussie customers, who still have to fork out at least $485 to buy the seven-inch tablet from RIM. So what gives? We asked RIM’s PR agency whether or not we could expect to see radically reduced prices any time soon.
The initial response to our queries was a little light on detail, but did point us towards the current bonus Playbook deal with Optus at the moment:
There may be specials offered by carriers and retailers, such as the bundle available from Optus for the BlackBerry PlayBook and BlackBerry Torch 9860 for $49 (https://www.optus.com.au/shop/mobilephone/blackberry).
Please feel free to check with carriers and retailers for details about post-Christmas deals.
Of course, that didn’t actually answer the question about whether RIM would be dropping the price locally as well, so we followed up.
Deals like the Optus one, through the retailers that are selling the PlayBook devices, do represent RIM working with retailers on price reductions in this market.
There may be other specials via retailers to come, and there may be others currently in market but I don’t have a list of them, which is why I suggested that retailers and carriers could provide their current pricing information.
There could be special pricing to come, or limited time offers like the one on the US ShopBlackBerry website, but that is not something that would be commented upon in advance.
We will let you know if we are able to get more information about specials currently in market.
Which can be nicely paraphrased to: “No, we aren’t going to drop the price any time soon. And even if we are, we’re not going to tell you about it.”