RIM’s introductory tablet, the BlackBerry PlayBook, has been on the market for roughly seven months now, and hasn’t seen the traction that the company would exactly like. In fact, sales are so bad that only 150,000 PlayBook tablets were shipped in Q3. RIM announced today, prior to its Q3 earnings call next week, that it’ll be recording a pre-tax provision of $485 million for unsold inventory, specifically the PlayBook, reports The Verge. To put that into layman’s terms, RIM is devaluing $485 million of its inventory, simply because it believes PlayBook sales won’t be happening. So why isn’t the tablet selling like RIM thinks it should be?

The BlackBerry PlayBook uses RIM’s QNX based operating system featuring other add-ons like Adobe Air, which lets developers create applications on top of the operating system. These apps, built by developers, are available on BlackBerry’s “App World,” a similar market to Apple’s App Store and Android’s Market. Spec wise, the PlayBook is packing a 7-inch LCD display, 5-megapixel rear-camera, 3-megapixel front-camera, 16, 32, or 64 GB versions, 1 GHz dual-core Texas Instruments OMAP processor, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. The BlackBerry PlayBook is currently available at $199 for the 16 GB version, $299 for the 32 GB version, and $399 for the 64 GB version — which isn’t bad pricing at all. Originally, the 16 GB version shipped for $499, but saw price cuts very quickly.  With its dual-core processor, those specs aren’t too shabby, but I think the real issue comes down to the operating system that lies on top. So why are sales this bad?  The competition.

In Q3, Amazon’s Kindle Fire rumors were beginning to ramp up, and the 7-inch tablet finally shipped at the end. Luckily for the Fire, Amazon has a much stronger retail channel to sell the tablets through — and with the figures the company is giving, sales look to be certainly paying off. Also to name the obvious, Apple’s iPad 2 is priced at $499 and has a 10-inch screen. With Apple’s clever marketing and retail presence, it’s obvious it can sell this thing a little better. There are also other Android offerings like the Galaxy Tab 7, Archos 7, and Dell Streak 7. During Q3, HP also had a huge sale of its 9-inch webOS tablet the TouchPad — which went for only $99 through many channels. Which are you going to take: a $99 9.7-inch device or 7-inch $199 device?

What it boils down to is the fact that RIM didn’t have the right elements in place for the PlayBook to succeed. For one, it was missing necessary marketing. I only saw the PlayBook a few times through local retail channels, and never once saw it in a commercial on TV. How in the world are regular consumers going to know about this device? RIM should’ve followed Apple’s example when it comes to advertising, and pitched this tablet as a cheaper alternative to the iPad 2 once the company began to make price cuts. Second, I believe RIM made the wrong choice when it came to the operating system on the PlayBook. Its custom QNX-based OS made for a pain when it came down to developers building apps. And isn’t that all people want in tablets these days — apps? If RIM took the approach of using Android as its operating system, it for sure had the hardware in place to make a pretty successful tablet. I mean really, I think it got the price point and hardware down; its software execution was the part that was off.

RIM isn’t going to give up, however. The company made it very clear in today’s press release that it plans to keep pushing with the PlayBook brand, and will most likely go all-in with a version 2.0 of the product. Don’t forget, RIM also has a smart phone entity to its company, but it’s been seeing declines as well. This leaves me to make the conclusion that RIM is mismanaged — in the aspect of having co-CEOs. I mean really, who has two CEOs?

RIM has an awesome past, once being one of the top phone manufacturers in the world. Currently, RIM has been declining and trends don’t point toward it getting better. If RIM wants to see better sales, it better start making some bigger strides when it comes to its products. This tablet certainly isn’t one of them. Do you have the BlackBerry PlayBook? If so, be sure to let us know your experiences in the comments.