It seems other tablets are finally catching up with the iPad. But, here’s the thing. The iPad’s surprising opponent in the Canadian market is the Blackberry PlayBook! It seems during Q4 last year, iPad’s market share sunk from 86 percent to 68 percent in Canada while PlayBook gained market share and jumped fro just 5 percent to 15 percent, according to a report by the globe and mail.
It seems all along, while we had written off the PlayBook, RIM wanted to bounce back. One of the major reasons of the increase in PlayBook’s sales is RIM cutting the price by half resulting in a fire sale and the PlayBook being sold out. From the figures, it seems that people have finally woken up to cheap and quality alternatives to the Apple iPad.
In India, although the PlayBook has come down to a sub-13K price tag, we just have so much to choose from. We are spoilt for choice when it comes to budget tabs and the PlayBook is just one of many candidates. Globally, even though RIM has sold out it PlayBook, it still faces competition from the likes of Amazon’s Kindle Fire. According to some reports, Apple might also be looking to come up with a cheaper iPad to compete in the budget market.
We think every company needs to wake up seeing these figures and provide us quality tablets at affordable prices. Don’t they?