Ahead of the holiday shopping season, the prices of RIM PalyBook tablets were slashed by retailer Best Buy. Apparently this move has augmented the sales of this device. Best Buy has said that it has sold all the RIM tablets which were available with it. It has also said that it will soon make additional units of the RIM tablets available for consumers.
In the meantime, another low-priced tablet, Kindle Fire, has also become one of the best selling products at Best Buy. An attractive feature of this tablet is its highly modified Android interface that facilitates the purchasing of e-books and online streaming contents. The ‘virtual bookshelf’ and the user interface of Kindle Fire makes it distinct. Although Kindle Fire is a lot different from the traditional tablets, it has been successful in gaining consumer attention. Analysts said that Amazon makes profit not from the Kindle Fire hardware, but from the paid content it makes available on this device. Most analysts expect Kindle Fire to give stiff competition to the popular iPad. However, iPad rental and purchase demand still remains unmatched in the market.
HP was the first manufacturer to show that low-price tablets are capable of attracting customers. The price of its tablet, HP TouchPad, was slashed down when the company decided to terminate its tablet business due to anemic sales. Consumers flocked to the nearest electronic shops to grab the low-priced tablets of HP. But unlike Amazon, which gains profit from its online store, HP and RIM may not gain much profit even though their sales are enhanced. The reason for this is that these devices offer third party applications while Amazon provides its own contents and applications.
