Best Buy has confirmed to ZDNet UK's sister site CNET News that it has sold out of Research In Motion's BlackBerry PlayBook tablet in the US, after making a substantial price cut.
The firm was among several retailers offering a Black Friday promotion in the US, which reduced the price of a 16GB and 32GB PlayBook to $199.99 (£128) and $299.99 respectively. Best Buy — which announced a closing down sale at its UK stores on Monday — said it plans to get additional units in the "near future", and that they could be purchased online.
That even the PlayBook was swept up in the post-Thanksgiving shopping frenzy speaks to the selling point of the $200 price tag of tablets. Amazon earlier on Monday said that sales of its Kindle family quadrupled from a year ago, most likely helped by the $200 Kindle Fire, which has remained atop the shopping site's best-selling product list since it was announced eight weeks ago.
For more on this ZDNet UK-selected story, see Best Buy: We're sold out of PlayBooks on CNET News.
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Bought 1. Never would even start setup. RIM offered a replacement -- if I would give them $499 to hold until dead brick got returned. Thus at least temporarily, unless the return got lost, I was out $598 for a $199 toy. I asked the supervisor to call back the next time RIM sold a 16gig Playbook for $499... and informed him that RIM has a new way to lose loyal clients -- I own 2 phones and a tablet and will switch all 3. Service had asked me 5 times to do the very set-up my tablet could NOT start and told me I needed an o.s. version that is not even downloadable in Canada. RIM is over the edge in quality, service, and supervision.