[slick1two]

http://crackberry.com/blackberry-pla...ng-new-ipad-uk

Just as we're heading down the home stretch for the big BlackBerry 10 announcement tomorrow, it looks like we have another bit of fun news as well. According to Context, the BlackBerry PlayBook is currently outselling the new iPad in the UK. Yes, you read that right. In some very cool and unexpected news, the PlayBook has been tops during the last two months of 2012.

Context says the 160,000 PlayBooks sold in comparison to 113,000 of the latest iPad model (the total number of all iPads sold however was 203,000). The PlayBook does sell for less than half of a new iPad however, fetching £129 to the iPads £399. Also noted is that retailers have much higher profit margins for the PlayBook which helps them want to move more product. Hopefully this is a good sign of what's to come when BB10 phones land in the UK as well.

Are you one of those who opted for a PB instead of the New Ipad? Of course the price is attractive as it's heavily discounted. Be interesting to see figures for this quarter too in a couple of months to see if that trend is continuing. But the short of it is, Playbooks selling quite well right now.

[slick1two]

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/201...blighty_slabs/

As for the rest, Nexus 7 sold 105k, galaxy tab 2 10.1 85k and Galaxy tab 7 inch 60k sales.

[mizhog]

i suppose if your giving it away you would. I have a playbook and ipad 4. Both great tablets for different reasons.

[slick1two]

Originally Posted by mizhog

i suppose if your giving it away you would. I have a playbook and ipad 4. Both great tablets for different reasons.

Well Nexus 7s aren't being given away but being sold at a competitive price and were not far off ipad 4 sales. 113k to 105k. Bottom line is, these rival tablets offer excellent performance for the price. Unless future ipads offer something mind blowing the trend of cheaper tablets selling well, will continue.

[paulbrock]

a quarter of tablet sales are ipads. I thought it was around 50%. A little surprised so many people are picking up the Playbook, but as the article says, a nice little earner for the retailers.

[IvanIV]

Could be that those who wanted iPad already got iPad3, 4 was a bit unexpected and a WTF moment.

[alanwarwic]

Originally Posted by paulbrock

.... I thought it was around 50%....

Obviously that had been said for way too long

Just maybe everyone was waiting for the 128GB iPad.

[grumpyoldbat]

A couple of questions on the quality of this data...

Who are Context? I've never heard of them before.

Which sales channels do they actually monitor? The article doesn't say, but seems to indicate that Apple stores aren't included, so that would surely skew the numbers?

[paulbrock]

here's their press release
http://www.contextworld.com/c/docume...=DLFE-4604.pdf

slightly different to the initial reporting.... hmmm...

[stud u like]

Originally Posted by paulbrock

a quarter of tablet sales are ipads. I thought it was around 50%. A little surprised so many people are picking up the Playbook, but as the article says, a nice little earner for the retailers.

It does what I want it to do. I also have an Ipad.

[grumpyoldbat]

Originally Posted by paulbrock

here's their press release
http://www.contextworld.com/c/docume...=DLFE-4604.pdf

slightly different to the initial reporting.... hmmm...

That's a rubbish report. Their website doesn't give any details on the specifics of where they draw their info from, and the "last quarter" quoted in the Crackberry article, turns out to be "during November/December" but doesn't give specifics.

It's pretty light on detail, so personally I'll take it with a pinch of salt. I know the Playbook is cheap, but I find it hard to believe it outsold Kindle Fires, Nexus 7s and iPads overall.

I bet they don't have direct sales figures for Amazon, Google and Apple included!

[paulbrock]

Originally Posted by grumpyoldbat

That's a rubbish report. Their website doesn't give any details on the specifics of where they draw their info from, and the "last quarter" quoted in the Crackberry article, turns out to be "during November/December" but doesn't give specifics.

It's pretty light on detail, so personally I'll take it with a pinch of salt. I know the Playbook is cheap, but I find it hard to believe it outsold Kindle Fires, Nexus 7s and iPads overall.

I bet they don't have direct sales figures for Amazon, Google and Apple included!

to be fair, its a press release not a report. I couldn't find the report, but it looks like a lot of their stuff is behind a firewall. What I'd be interested to know is who put the ipad 4 numbers in to get the Playbook beats Ipad4 headline. It doesn't appear that it was Context.

[muchly]

It's nonsense not to include Apple stores or Apple Premium Resellers as these would account for a large majority of sales, especially for the iPad mini which as the report says was severely constrained outside the Apple ecosystem.

[Anika Hanson]

also there was a lot of confusion regarding the iPad 3 and 4 and which was the new ipad with retina display. At first many of the shops were still selling the iPad 3 and calling it the new ipad. Many had no clue about the iPad 4 for a while. If you factor those sales in the iPad 4 would have sold more than the play book even at its discounted price.

[Anika Hanson]

Originally Posted by slick1two

Well Nexus 7s aren't being given away but being sold at a competitive price and were not far off ipad 4 sales. 113k to 105k. Bottom line is, these rival tablets offer excellent performance for the price. Unless future ipads offer something mind blowing the trend of cheaper tablets selling well, will continue.

They are being given away with certain mobile phone contracts and at a very reduced price if you subscribe to the times.

[psionic]

Playbooks are really good value for 64GB with Flash. The only let down is software availability.

[Rodney McKay]

Originally Posted by psionic

Playbooks are really good value for 64GB with Flash. The only let down is software availability.

True, but you can side load quite a few Android apps and the browser works well with websites, so it's not such an issue.

[slick1two]

Originally Posted by Rodney McKay

True, but you can side load quite a few Android apps and the browser works well with websites, so it's not such an issue.

Yep people need to start thinking outside of the box a little. as mobile browsers become more advanced there doesn't need to be a heavy reliance on apps in the traditional sense. look how Google chrome on the desktop can run feature rich apps and games right in the browser itself. HTML 5 is powerful and you are gonna see a lot more amazing web apps on a par with regular app that you get from the app stores.

blackberry are ahead of the game in this regard as they have a browser in bb10 capable of running web apps extremely well and are still not dropping flash So current content will still be supported.

[psionic]

Don't know if will ever happen, but I have read that Blackberry are intending to release BB10 for the Playbook at some point. That should improve things a lot, if the hardware can manage it.

[Roush]

Originally Posted by paulbrock

a quarter of tablet sales are ipads. I thought it was around 50%. A little surprised so many people are picking up the Playbook, but as the article says, a nice little earner for the retailers.

Remember that the figures here don't include either Apple's online sales, Apple's retail store sales, or Apple's Premium Reseller sales (Apple deliver directly to their Premium Resellers)

These figures are movements through the generic UK IT supply chains only.

[Rodney McKay]

Originally Posted by psionic

Don't know if will ever happen, but I have read that Blackberry are intending to release BB10 for the Playbook at some point. That should improve things a lot, if the hardware can manage it.

Hopefully they've designed BB10 with the PB in mind

[paulbrock]

Originally Posted by Roush

Remember that the figures here don't include either Apple's online sales, Apple's retail store sales, or Apple's Premium Reseller sales (Apple deliver directly to their Premium Resellers)

These figures are movements through the generic UK IT supply chains only.

where does the it say that?

[Roush]

Originally Posted by paulbrock

where does the it say that?

Hmm. The more I look into this the less credible the data looks.

It turns out that they just send out a bunch of surveys to companies who buy and sell IT products and collate the results.

http://www.contextworld.com/c/docume...=DLFE-4283.pdf

No figures for the UK survey, but they only had a 3.1% response rate during their pilot scheme in Spain over the summer. 465 responses from 15,000 surveys issued.

Anyway, those slides show their data collection processes, and clearly show that direct from vendor sales are not captured.

[Tassium]

Even if the data were true it's meaningless, like comparing only a random 50m of a 800m race.

Will 160k Playbooks sell next quarter? No, these were xmas sales of a discounted gadget.

[psionic]

Originally Posted by Tassium

Even if the data were true it's meaningless, like comparing only a random 50m of a 800m race.

Will 160k Playbooks sell next quarter? No, these were xmas sales of a discounted gadget.

There is little doubt the headline and statistics are very flawed.