The Unofficial BlackBerry Weblog
We’ve seen a lot of reviews of BlackBerry 10 and the Z10 since its launch at the beginning of February, and, for the most part, reviews have been pretty favorable of BlackBerry’s next generation OS.
The big question for BlackBerry, however, is whether or not businesses and consumers will actually go out and buy BlackBerry 10 devices.
Even though rumors that the BlackBerry PlayBook will launch on April 10th started to surface yesterday, there is absolutely no doubt that the news cycle was dominated by the iPad 2, which, just happens to go on sale March 10th, one full month before the BlackBerry PlayBook if the rumors turn out to be true. I don’t believe that RIM needs to try to go toe to toe with Apple for the PlayBook to be a success. Doing so would be quite foolish, actually, but I do think that RIM will be competing for many of the same hearts and minds (consumers) as Apple when it comes to people that want new tablets, and, I wonder if allowing the iPad 2 to be launched before the PlayBook, which was announced back at the end of last summer.
There certainly will be people that had every intention on getting the BlackBerry PlayBook, but, end up not getting one because they opt for the iPad2 if for no other reason than they are tired of waiting. Clearly this is an opportunity lost for RIM. A better question to ask may be how big of an opportunity lost is this for the BlackBerry PlayBook?
There are a lot of folks saying that RIM’s inability to launch the BlackBerry PlayBook before the iPad 2 will kill any chances of success that the PlayBook may have had. I believe the form factor and the rave reviews that the PlayBook has received prevent the release date from being the sole determining factor of success, but, an iPad 2 being in the mix for possibly a month before the PlayBook becomes available certainly won’t boost sales.
I, and, I bet quite a few others, still plan on getting the BlackBerry PlayBook once it is released. Like I said the other day, however, I just wish RIM would release the thing already…
Mobile World Congress, one of the biggest wireless industry events of the year, kicks off next week in Barcelona, Spain. MWC is “the” show when it comes to mobile phones and all of the big players will be there, including Research in Motion. RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie is listed as one of the keynote speakers and he will undoubtedly talk about the BlackBerry PlayBook which is expected to ship within the next month to six weeks or so. The question, however, is will RIM make any official announcements as to new BlackBerry phones soon to be released?
The BlackBerry Torch has been carrying the mantle as flagship of the BlackBerry line-up since it came out, but, it really offered no improvements in horsepower over the Bold 9700 which came out a year earlier. The fastest BlackBerry on the market barely has half the processor that it’s competitors, some released before the Torch, has. We know that we aren’t going to get a dual-core, QNX running, BlackBerry Playbook squeezed down to the size of a BlackBerry Storm, but, I hope we do get something with a little more legs that doesn’t seem ridiculously outdated when compared every other smartphone available in North America.
There is no question that a huge point of focus for Research in Motion at CES 2011 will be the BlackBerry PlayBook. Even though the show officially doesn’t start until today, RIM has already let bloggers to play around with the device and a Sprint 4G BlackBerry PlayBook has been officially announced and is supposed to come out this summer. This has kind of got me to wondering, is the BlackBerry PlayBook actually the next generation BlackBerry?
One of the things that I really like about the BlackBerry PlayBook is that it is small enough to fit into the breast pocket of a man’s sport coat. This is, in my opinion, just one of the huge advantages over the current iPad (a glorious device by the way). There are places that I just don’t take my iPad because I have to actively carry it, but the PlayBook can fit into my jacket pocket.
Now that we know that Sprint is sticking 4G into the PlayBook there is no reason to believe that you couldn’t make a phone call from it. We don’t know if Sprint or RIM will actually make voice a priority for the 4G PlayBook, however, the ability clearly would be there if the carrier allows it. A 7-inch tablet is still a bit too big to be a primary phone, but, how hard would it be for RIM to shrink the PlayBook down to, say, 4.7 inches? Maybe 4.3 inches? Something tells me that RIM probably already has…
Gang, I think that the BlackBerry PlayBook may actually be the next BlackBerry smartphone…
There is a really good editorial over on Engadget by tech editor Joanna Stern. I recently damaged my BlackBerry Storm and found myself in almost exactly the same situation. I wanted to buy a new BlackBerry, however, no BlackBerry exists that does all the things that, going by today’s standards, smartphones should do.
Check out “RIM seems to be as lost as my BlackBerry”… It truly is a good read.
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