Analyst: BlackBerry Playbook is an ‘albatross’

Analysts are starting to respond to RIM’s $485m loss on the BlackBerry Playbook, and the outlook is not positive. Bloomberg Businessweek outlines a compelling theory of the burden the Playbook places on RIM: it’s a necessary evil that RIM can’t afford to simply kill (like HP did with the TouchPad) because it’s the only device RIM offers that runs its next-generation BBX OS. At the same time, massive price cuts mean that RIM is losing significant money on every Playbook it does manage to sell. Amidst this turmoil, RIM’s shares have dropped 71 percent since the beginning of this year, while an analyst from Bahl & Gaynor Investment Counsel referred to the Playbook as an “albatross or a yoke around the neck.” While the albatross is shot dead in the classic Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem, the Playbook lives on — it seems RIM can’t afford to shoot it down yet.