Oh, silly BlackBerry PlayBook. Oh, silly RIM.
There are so many potential customers out there who really want the device to be released because of RIM's long history of fantastic email and messaging compatibilities. And I don't blame them; that's one of the reasons I was so excited about the PlayBook, too.
But now, it seems that email, messaging, and even calendar apps won't be coming natively on the PlayBook at launch. RIM explains that it's more of a security concern with the apps than them not being ready, but I'm fairly positive that statement still means that the apps are unfinished.
In my opinion, this is a major downfall for the PlayBook and even RIM. The company obviously has a huge reputation as a leader in messaging, and this is a very foolish move on their part. Hopefully, RIM's security department is working hard on getting the security flaws ironed out for a release of these apps within a week of the release of the device itself.
The same way Samsung witheld 3G voice and said it didn’t want the Tab to diminish smartphone sales, BB is protecting their bread and butter. They want people to have to buy a phone in order to access their messenger and email. They want people to buy their phones to go along with Playbook but unless they step it up and release a decent companion phone they could end up losing sales.
Such an epic #FAIL by doing this. How much more half-assed can you get. Now that the 10.1″ Samsung tablet can be had for $499 or the 8.9″ tablet can be had for $469 and both are WIFI as well with Honeycomb, RIM had literally no room to fail on the playbook.
Why would I buy this when I can buy an all-in-one integrated device? Yeah, I know – for the business environment – they’ll want the BB. But for folks outside of corporate america (heck, maybe even INSIDE corporate america) – I’d look elsewhere.
Kevin