RIM Has Sold Just 490,000 PlayBooks [REPORT]

**Waqas** · September 14, 2011

Just 490,000 Research in Motion PlayBooks sold in the device’s first quarter compared to 9.25 million iPads sold over the same period, according to a report.

Bloomberg cites a survey of analysts for the figure, who predict RIM will sell around 2.2 million PlayBooks for the full year. Michael Walkley, an analyst with Canaccord Genuity, estimates RIM will ship 1.5 million tablets in 2011, according to the report.

RIM introduced PlayBook, priced at $500, in the U.S. and Canada in April. The device, which targets the corporate market, sports a 7-inch screen compared to the iPad’s 10-inch screen. Apple’s former CEO Steve Jobs has called such 7-inch tablets “tweeners,” because they’re too large to be a smartphone and too small to be a tablet.

Jobs’ opinion about the small-sized tablet’s viability may be confirmed by RIM’s poor success with PlayBook. RIM, of course, isn’t the only manufacturer to have trouble gaining traction with a non-Apple tablet device. Most famously, Hewlett-Packard pulled out of the market entirely after its TouchPad experienced dismal sales.

More About: playbook, RIM, tablet pcs