16GB Blackberry Playbook Canned by RIM

Another product being seen walked out the door by a company is the 16GB model of the Blackberry Playbook. The 32GB and 64GB model are safe—for now—but the 16GB has met its fate. Retailers will still be selling the product while supplies last, but once it is gone, there will be no more. Unfortunately, the Playbook isn’t going out the way the Touchpad did (fire sale), so supplies aren’t going to run out too quickly. Here is an official statement from RIM’s PR:

“RIM will no longer be making the 16 GB model of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. The 16 GB PlayBook will continue to be available for distributors and retailers while quantities last. We continue to remain committed to the tablet space and the 32 GB and 64 GB models of the BlackBerry PlayBook continue to be available from our distributors and retailers around the world.

There is more value for our customers in the higher capacity models (32 GB, 64 GB), and as such we have decided to focus our efforts here.”

This is comes right before the official release of the 2.1 update to the Playbook’s software. Maybe RIM is brewing something in the background? Could the heavy-rumored Playbook 2 finally show its head later this year? We will just have to wait and see.