In April, RIM forecast sales of 4-5 million PlayBooks in 2011, the sources noted. However, RIM shipped fewer than 800,000 units during the first half of 2011 and monthly shipments dropped to about 100,000 units in the third quarter, [industry] sources said.

The Guardian suggests that RIM may have as many as 800,000 unsold units stockpiled, and the production cuts suggest RIM may not expect to have cleared its inventory backlog by the end of its fiscal year next May. It reports that RIM’s inventories have grown substantially over the last few years,

Is the PlayBook going to be a casualty of the iPad’s unsinkability? It wouldn’t exactly come as a surprise. It lacks either the Android operating system of most popular iPad-competitors like the Galaxy Tab, or or the content on offer from competing tablet manufacturers Amazon or Barnes & Noble. There doesn’t seem to be a compelling reason to buy it save for its integration with the BlackBerry smartphone.

This isn’t directly ebook related, but I think it’s important and a major reason (which analysts have ignored) why the iPad is doing so well.  The title, above, is from an article in ReadWriteWeb by Sarah Perez:

There’s an interesting trend happening in mobile these days. Companies – major companies like Samsung, Motorola, Kyocera, RIM and Microsoft – are launching unfinished, unpolished products and then asking us, the consumers, to buy them based on their “potential.” Despite the fact that the new BlackBerry tablet computer has no email client or wide selection of apps, or that Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 can’t even multi-task, or that Android Honeycomb is only a few months old and, frankly, still a little buggy, we’re expected to place our hard-earned dollars, and, in some cases, even sign multi-year mobile contracts for these gadgets, based on “what could be.”

Not biting? Well, you’re not alone. …

Android tablets aren’t selling well. The Motorola Xoom, specifically, may have bombed. Windows Phone isn’t selling well. And the PlayBook? Too soon to tell. Meanwhile, Apple is pulling in record-breaking numbers. Unlike much of its competition, Apple doesn’t launch prototypes or unfinished products. Not surprisingly, it’s a strategy that seems to work.

Lots more in the article.

Today, Tyler Lessard, the head of RIM’s BlackBerry Developer Relations and Developer Programs team responded on the Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog.

Jamie’s posting on Friday raised a number of challenges that he faced while getting started with development for the BlackBerry PlayBook and while registering to become a BlackBerry App World vendor. First off, I’d like to thank Jamie for his candid feedback. Suggestions like his are critical in helping us improve our products and processes. I want you to know that we are absolutely listening.

He goes into detail, mentioning some of Jamie’s concerns point by point and what BlackBerry was doing to address them. It’s fairly impressive that he didn’t even wait until Monday to get the post out, especially considering it presumably had to be run by RIM’s lawyers or publicity department before posting. While much of it is standard corporate-reassurance speak, it does nonetheless provide a sharp contrast to Apple’s overall silence in response to disgruntled developers.

If RIM is able to overcome the problems Murai pointed out and attract more developers to the fold, perhaps it might just have a chance to compete against the iPad after all.

He points out that Apple has done such a good job making the tablet useful in people’s everyday lives that everybody else is still trying to be Apple rather than beat Apple. Every other tablet introduced thus far has looked remarkably similar to the iPad. Even the competitors who come the closest—HP and RIM—still haven’t done anything.

And Apple is only a week away from moving the goalposts again.

Blackberry is bringing its new Playbook tablet to market, of course, but it is becoming unclear how well it is going to be able to compete with Apple. Yesterday, disgruntled would-be developer Jamie Murai blogged at length about how Playbook’s over-bureaucratized, over-expensive, under-useable development process had driven him away from developing for it.

So, my dear RIM, primary supporter of my local economy, I bid you adieu. You have succeeded in your quest of driving away a perfectly willing developer from your platform. On a more serious note, being the underdog, you need to make your process AT LEAST as simple as Apple’s or Google’s, if not more so. You need to make your tools AT LEAST as good as Apple’s or Google’s, if not more so. You have failed at both.

This all must be coming as great schadenfreude for long-time Apple fans, who watched for decades as Microsoft stole march after march on (and idea after idea from) Apple and prospered while Apple languished in relative obscurity. Apple has the tablet bit in its teeth and shows no signs of slowing down.

Rumor places the device at 7” in size, smaller than the current iPad but the same size as the Galaxy Tab (and the rumored 7” iPad Apple is supposedly developing). The device would have Bluetooth connectivity, but would require a BlackBerry smartphone to connect to 3G Internet. It would run an operating system from QNX, which is better known for making embedded OSes for a number of applications (including nuclear reactors). (I also remember QNX from back in the ‘90s when they released a bootable desktop PC OS that would fit on a floppy disk.)

There’s not a lot that’s new about this story, except that we might be getting to see the tablet sometime soon. Will it manage to stand out from the crowd of other tablets and slates that are on their way, and will it be enough to save RIM whose BlackBerry OS 6 has been criticized as slow, buggy, and outdated?

QNX embedded software is used in a variety of devices, ranging from BMW and Porsche car audio systems to medical devices to nuclear power plants to the Crusher robot tank. It has also been released as a downloadable bootable floppy disk distribution, and has a small but active open-source developer community. RIM reportedly hopes to take advantage of this community to promote application development for the BlackPad.

Meanwhile, PreCentral reports that Hewlett-Packard has officially confirmed, during an investor call, that a webOS tablet will be released “in early 2011”. Not many other details were forthcoming, however.

Of course, the big question is how any of these tablets will stack up against the 800-lb gorilla that is the iPad.

CNet ties together some other reports, including a post from Bloomberg in which anonymous sources claim the device is going to be Blackberry’s crack at killing the iPad, having similar specs and pricing to the wifi-only version, and will launch by November.

The tablet will be called the Blackpad, according to Bloomberg. Its touch screen will measure 9.7 inches, similar to the iPad, and the price will be "in line" with Apple’s tablet, the cheapest model starting at $499.

It will rely on wi-fi and Bluetooth to connect to the Internet, rather than 3G, and might well be meant more as a companion device to the Blackberry for people who already own one than as a true standalone.

Either way, Gadgetell notes that RIM and AT&T are planning some kind of special event in New York on Tuesday, August 3rd, and it might well be a natural place and time for such a tablet to be announced.

The Blackberry has had a number of e-book reading apps, including the Mobipocket reader that the iPhone ecosystem still lacks, but has not generally had the multimedia-friendly reputation of the iPhone. Can it turn this around with a Blackberry tablet? Will the tablet, unlike the iPad, run Flash?

Perhaps we’ll get some of the answers on Tuesday.

As Gadgetell points out, RIM (Research In Motion, the makers of the Blackberry) started out with a business focus and has been aimed primarily at the enterprise ever since. Apple, on the other hand, has had to retrofit all the enterprise features that users have asked for—and even then they won’t be out until OS 4.0. With that in mind, a potential Blackberry tablet could have a significant edge over the iPad when it comes to business adoption even if it doesn’t catch on with consumers.

But at the moment, nothing about the potential device is clear, so it seems largely to be a case of “wait and see.”