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Slightly Sunnier Days For The PlayBookNovember 24, 2011
A couple of months ago I wrote a post about the news that only 200,000 PlayBooks were sold that quarter, and how things were looking pretty rocky.
Fortunately, the feeling of things has picked up a bit recently.
The biggest help has been discounts to the price of the PlayBook, which at first were $200 off, and are now $300 off. I seem to be reading things indicating that stores are for the most part completely sold out, and that RIM has even started selling the devices directly from its website. My guess is that this will lead to a lot of PlayBooks getting out into consumer hands, which is great. (especially for developers)
Next, is the announcement that BBX phones will have the same resolution as the PlayBook. It still remains unclear how easy it will be to port PlayBook apps to BBX phones, but it is starting to sound pretty easy, and that's exciting because it means that most of the work developers have been putting into PlayBook apps will pay dividends down the road. Music to my ears.
Another change is that, as time has rolled along, more apps have started popping up. I wasn't sure this would happen given the glum mood a couple of months ago, but it has. A bunch of EA games have been published, Duke Nukem showed up recently, and a couple days ago a really beautiful game Machinarium appeared. I can't imagine any of these will get much return on investment, so it's hard to say whether this will be of long term significance, but still, having some good content sprouting up lightens the mood.
I have published some new apps as of recent. Since I create really light weight, simple apps, one would only expect them to be drops in the bucket, but I think that two of them are pretty solid additions to the PlayBook repertoire. The first was Picasa Sync, which allows you to wireless keep your PlayBook up to date with your best photos. It got covered by BerryReview, was a featured PlayBook app, and all around I think was a notable addition to the PlayBook app selection. I have since publish Flickr Sync and SmugMug sync, and just last night significantly upgraded Picasa Sync to allow selecting which albums to download if you so desire. Another app that I published recently, which I hope is about to be approved (fingers crossed) is iTunes Sync, which allows you to keep your PlayBook up to date with your recent music purchases, sans wires. This is a really really nice feature to have, something that I always wished mobile devices did well, and if I am successful at delivering that to the PlayBook, I think that's another significant up-tick.
So it has been exciting not only to see positive signs, but to feel like, without much effort, I have been able to make real contributions to the community.
Featured AppSeptember 30, 2011
I was treated to a surprise this morning when I peeked at my app sales: It was only 8 AM and my Baby Names app had already generated $20 of revenue, whereas typically it would be between $0 and and $4 for that time of day. Nothing like that has happened before, so I wondered to myself what could be going on... a couple hours later, it was up to $30, then $40. Obviously something was up. I discovered that my app was was a featured application on
BlackBerry's app world page. Of the 40 or so apps, it was the 40th one. To my amusement however, the last app shows up to the left of the first app, slightly dimmed, whereas apps 2-39 aren't visible at all unless you wait on the page for the carousel to slowly rotate through.
By the end of the day I've earned $50, and the extra revenue has caused my app to show up on the PlayBook "Top Purchased" section of App World, which is cool too. Interesting to know that the 20th highest grossing app on PlayBook brings in around $50 of revenue every day. (I'd bet the equivalent spot on the iPhone's charts brings in > $2500/day)
BB/PlayBookSeptember 17, 2011
The statistic that 200,000 PlayBook units were shipped this quarter is an interesting one, as compared to the 500,000 that were shipped last quarter. Even though it's unclear how "units shipped" corresponds to actual sales, the trend is pretty discouraging. And that gets me thinking... given this glum news, what does that mean for the future of the PlayBook?
If the PlayBook were doing well, then it might be a justified "distraction" for RIM from it's core phone business. But if it's doing poorly, then how can it be justified? And if it can't be justified, then... what?
It has been mentioned that there is an expectation that sales will improve when native email and Android app support hits, but I'm wary of that argument. As I've mentioned before, having native email is a nice-to-have, but for me it's far from critical. And Android app support... well, it would be extremely valuable if it Android apps were first class citizens, but my understanding is that you have to boot up this "Android player" first, and then access Andriod apps. Even if it only takes 10-15 seconds to boot up the Android player, that's a pretty convoluted process. I shouldn't judge the solution until I've seen it in completed, but I'm not exactly hopeful that it will be a great solution.
If I'm right that v2.0 of the PlayBook software won't cause a big shift in consumer appetite, that leaves the PlayBook in a bad spot. And with any platform, there's the chicken and egg problem that low unit sales mean that big development shops aren't motivated to develop for the platform, and without major apps, a platform is going to have a hard time.
So boo. We shall see...
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