BlackBerry PlayBook goes out of stock in India following discount, RIM extends the offer by another week

Looks like RIM is having a great start to the new year, at least in India. Following the massive price cut the Canadian company is having a hard time keeping the PlayBook in stock thanks to the great response from the customers.

As you may know, RIM announced a major price cut at the end of December that was to last till the end of the year. The prices for 16, 32 and 64GB models were slashed to $199, $249 and $399 respectively in the US but similar prices were found in other markets as well. After the price cut, and perhaps due to the limited nature of the sale, there was suddenly a large number of buyers for the tablet that was till now gathering dust on the shelves, with most of the retailers in India going out of stock within a day or two. In fact RIM sold over 12,000 units in the country in just four days after the sale was announced.

Looking at the incredible response, RIM has now announced that they will be extending the offer for another week. The prices will remain the same as before, that is INR 13,490 ($252) for the 16GB model, INR 15,990 ($299) for the 32GB model and INR 24,490 ($458) for the 64GB model.

Having bought one myself, I can say that for the price it is a good deal. Don’t expect much in terms of apps, though, but for web browsing and media consumption, the PlayBook is good enough.

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Gazelle: BlackBerry as part payment at any time-high

Gazelle Gadget purchaser who buys equipment in exchange for money, announced today that it has seen a 80 percent increase in trade BlackBerry since last week, up from record levels earlier this month.
The metric is a prolonged disruption of Research In Motion-mail and messaging services to BlackBerry, which left users can not communicate with each other or send and receive e-mails worldwide. To placate the angry users, RIM provides users with $ 100 free "premium" of applications. The rise coincided with the launch of Apple iPhone 4S. 

Gazelle "Chief Gadget Officer 'Anthony Scarsella told CNET that this is" easily the largest volume of trades BlackBerry seen period. "That includes a" spike "due to court this month." In the grand scheme of growth of BlackBerry in the last month, may be more or less completely attributed to the launch of the iPhone 4S, "Scarsella said. 
Besides seeing a boost BlackBerry recent Scarsella says Android as part payment has been an increase of 72 percent over the same period of time. That number may be slightly blurred to attribute to any type of event though.
Gazelle says that most of Android as part of the payment have been on the Sprint network, which began to take the iPhone for the first time this month. Users can also plan the future of one of the many new Android devices announced in recent weeks. That includes two cores Motorola Razr Droid 4G LTE smartphone and Samsung Nexus Galaxy, which was released both within hours of each other and represent the latest and greatest in the Google Android platform.
In total, Gazelle has seen about 65,000 payments as part of Apple's iPhone, as it began to buy customers, and Scarsella said he expects the number to reach 75,000 by the end of this week. Earlier this month, the company reported becoming iPhone using cash, once every 15 seconds in an attempt to block the buyback price on the day they announced the iPhone 4S.

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BlackBerry, back in The business?

BlackBerry users around the world experienced a rude shock, like the last few days proved to be very distressing, because disruption of BB services in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Brazil, Chile and Argentina. The outage was caused by a switch failure within the RIM infrastructure. BlackBerry users could not access the web or through email and BBM worse.
After three days of inactivity, the services were restored on Thursday, but due to the backlog will take some time to return to normal. Speaking at a press conference the heads of RIM, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, apologized to its 70 million users worldwide and admitted his inability to quickly solve the fault had been frustrating. Balsillie was quoted as saying his approach has been 100 percent on getting the systems in place while adding that the company begins to look for ways to appease customers.

BlackBerry, often referred to as "Crackberry" because of his addiction among users, has been a change in recent years and has legions of consumers around the world. However, the recent loss of data services may limit the reputation of the Canadian manufacturer. This situation has closely followed the death of Steve Jobs that the Internet was flooded with messages such as - Steve Jobs went to heaven and pulled the plug on the BlackBerry, BlackBerry thank you for honoring the death of Steve Jobs with a silence of 3 days, says the iPhone BlackBerry "iWork". On the other side were supporters of BB wallowing in misery. He poured his heart and conveyed their frustration on all available platforms either social blog, or forums.

Some People talked to some BlackBerry users to get their reaction, this is what they had to say -
The feeling seemed to generic service interruption acted as a wake-up call that made them realize how dependent and is used to service people and had become helpless as I felt for its decomposition. Simran Channey, 26-year-old marketing executive from a BlackBerry user for almost two years, was deeply affected. She says: "It gave me sleepless nights because I'm addicted to Twitter on BlackBerry and, often, if not sleep, I surf on my phone." So great was his frustration that even pondered the idea of ​​switching to Apple, but was stopped by monetary concerns. She is not alone, there are many who are addicted to their BBs and connected 24 / 7. 

Vidhi Shah, account coordinator, Text 100 and a BB user for the past two years she felt totally disconnected. Vidhi said, "No e-mails, and internet was like being isolated from the world. It's like an addiction to maintain control of your phone. BB recent updates are like news flashes to know what is happening in the world . Therefore, I felt completely out of touch with the people. I kept checking my phone, because I'm so used to it. But it is a bad addiction, so no need to cut back. In fact, being in the profession of PR is important for us to stay connected and is also the best way to keep in touch with friends and family around the world. "
While for some, like Desiree Fernandes 26 years of age account group head with CNBC TV18, who has been using a BlackBerry since 2008, the court acted as a blessing - "affected me a bit, but at the same time, was relieved of the e-mails and forth endlessly. So the break helped me back to the old life and I quite liked the rest. But that said, I do not want to switch to another smart phone, you never know, may have similar problems. "

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