Research in Motion, maker of the Blackberry phones and the PlayBook tablet, disclosed its PlayBook shipments today for its fiscal second quarter (ended August 27, 2011).

And they are HIDEOUSLY  UGLY.

RIM said it’d shipped 200,000 Blackberry Playbook tablets into the channel.

Yes, a piffling 200,000 PlayBooks were shipped into the channel in the entire second quarter.

Mind you, shipments are not the same as sales. Shipments are just sending the tablets to stores like BestBuy, Staples or Office Depot.

Actual sales must be so horrible that RIM did not disclose it. We’d be surprised if RIM has sold more than 10,000 units to customers.

RIM executives acknowledged on the conference call today that the majority of the increase in inventory in the quarter (to $945 million from $325 million in the previous quarter) was related to the global rollout of the BlackBerry PlayBook that started early in Q2.

PlayBook, like most other tablets, has found it hard to stand against the Apple iPad juggernaut.

Worse, PlayBook still does not offer native support for Blackberry’s vaunted e-mail service. An update later this year is expected to support Blackberry e-mail and add a software layer to let PlayBook tablets run Android apps.

By the way, PlayBook runs on the QNX software unlike the tablets from Samsung, Asus, Motorola and Sony that are powered by Google’s Android.

Unless you are a complete schmuck, you know that the iPad runs on Apple’s iOS software.

Interesting Statistic

What RIM shipped in 90-days in the second quarter, Apple sold in less than two days.

Apple sold 9.3 million iPad 2 tablets in its second quarter.

Worse than Q1

RIM’s disastrous performance vis-a-vis the PlayBook seems even more horrible when you take into account that it shipped 500,000 units in its first quarter.

So shipment of just 200,000 units in the second quarter suggests a lot of inventory is still left in the channel or that the channel is not keen on picking up more units because they ain’t moving because consumers are not interested in it.

Look for Big PlayBook Discounts

Without offering significant discounts, we’d say RIM will find it impossible to move the inventory in the stores.

So, all ye cheapo desis whining that you missed out on HP’s discontinued TouchPad tablet sale, get ready for the discounted PlayBook sale. It’s coming to a store near you, sooner rather than later.

Hell, we wouldn’t touch that sucker even if it’s offered at $49 or $99 a la the HP TouchPad.

  Blackberry Playbook, iPad