The BlackBerry PlayBook has been met with mixed reviews but that doesn’t appear to be impacting it at the store, as Best Buy is crowing about how well the first Research In Motion tablet is selling.
“Best Buy has had great success selling BlackBerry smart phones in North America, so our sales expectations for the BlackBerry PlayBook were very high,” Best Buy said in a statement, as quoted by All Things D. “To date, we have far exceeded those expectations and we’re finding that customers are even more interested in purchasing once they’ve tested the PlayBook in the store.”
If you notice, Best Buy isn’t releasing any sales figures for the BlackBerry PlayBook but, to be fair, Research In Motion hasn’t either. RIM recently lowered its expectations for the quarter due to slower-then-expected smartphone sales but it didn’t change its expectations for the Playbook sales. We should know soon though, as RIM will likely give a sales figure when it announces its quarterly numbers.
In our full review of the BlackBerry PlayBook, Simon thought it was an innovative first step for RIM into the modern age but it wasn’t quite fully baked.
I’m sure the platform and device will mature through a series of software updates, but out of the gate the PlayBook feels premature. It’s disheartening to say that after RIM has had such a long pre-launch period, and it’s especially unfortunate for the folks who have held out for the PlayBook despite tempting Android and Apple alternatives hitting the market.
Will RIM be able to ever catch the iPad 2 in terms of sales? Well, that might be too tall of an order but these good sales are definitely a good thing for RIM.
What do you think of the BlackBerry tablet? Let us know in the comments.
[Via All Things D]