Congratulations to the Dell Streak 7 and the BlackBerry PlayBook, the latest losers in the Laff-A-Lympics that is the rest of the tablet market!
To tell the truth, the Macalope had thought the Dell Streak had been killed back in August, but apparently that was only the Dell Streak 5. Hey, cut the horny one some slack! It’s hard to keep up on which crappy tablets have been cancelled! At any rate, if you danced prematurely on the Streak 7’s grave, go ahead and bust out another jig. With the amount of practice you’re getting, you’re probably turning into a regular Michael Flatley.
Like HP, Dell is believed to be putting most of its faith in Windows 8 tablets for the US market.
“Faith” is a good choice of words here, as it implies adherence to a belief system rather than making decisions based on empirical evidence.
Speaking of delusional, how are our friends north of the border doing?
Among other bad news, BlackBerry maker RIM announced today that it would take a $485 million write-down for its November quarter because it has too many unsold PlayBook tablets in inventory.
Ooh. That doesn’t sound good. Please feel free to make your own “amateur hour” joke.
Morgan Stanley estimated RIM was writing off 1.4 millinon PlayBooks while Jean-Louis Gassée thinks it could be more like 2.4 million.
2.4 million? How could they be stuck with so many? And can you imagine what the smell must be like?
A possible explanation lies in the way “sales” were reported in previous quarters. Perhaps these transactions weren’t totally final, meaning they shouldn’t have been recorded as revenue because the buyer had the right to return Playbooks to RIM. Faulty reporting of revenue could spell trouble with shareholders, the SEC and hungry attorneys.
POPCORN. THE MACALOPE IS GOING TO NEED SOME POPCORN OVER HERE, STAT.
The Kindle Fire, on the other hand, seems to be doing quite well, although it’s still not cause for concern over at Apple.
In an investor’s note released Friday, analyst Mark Moskowitz said that Apple expressed “confidence” in its ability to continue to lead the market and appeared unconcerned about lower-cost tablets. Even further, the company seems to believe that such rivals could steer more business its way.
“If anything, we think that Apple views the Kindle Fire as a device that stands to bring incremental consumers to the tablet market, and here, these consumers could gravitate to more feature-rich experiences,” Moskowitz said.
Those are pretty big “coulds” there. Still, Apple’s “coulds” are money in the bank compared to Dell and RIM’s “didn’ts.”
[Editors’ Note: Each week the Macalope skewers the worst of the week’s coverage of Apple and other technology companies. In addition to being a mythical beast, the Macalope is not an employee of Macworld. As a result, the Macalope is always free to criticize any media organization. Even ours.]