Rim PlayBook to hit UK in Q2 2011 Waiting for Rim's PlayBook BlackBerry tablet? Don't hold your breath - it's not out over here until April 2011 at the earliest. So says Gregory Wade, head of Rim's Asia operation, by way of local newssite DigiTimes. Wade said the PlayBook will debut in the US and Rim's native Canada in Q1 2011, with a broader roll-out …
It'll cost min £399 inc VAT and if anything they'll be the usual "non-North American*" taxes applied so I reckon it'll be closer to the £429 that the base iPad costs. By the time this is available here the 2nd generation iPad will be on the market and this will seem like a backwards step as the Playbook is yet another "me-too!" product.
*Canada is on the North American continent, smart arse.
Vapourware can always be priced competitively. Of course by then the cost will have crept up due to "component shortages" or some other excuse like "exchange rates".
I really don't get the "corporate" angle with this device. Sure, iPads have been trialled and bought for office use, but the consumer market is important too.
Creating a "corporate" device is probably an admission that it's no fun to use. Clunky, dull or just lacking in any software for the non-business customer.
The iPad will be a year old by the time the Playbook arrives, and in fact we'll probably have the iPad v2 at the time, so a lot of the comparisons in the video are pointless.
The 'win' for the PB is flash. You have to assume iPad 2 won't have flash, so it will have that edge. Assuming you think flash is an advantage, and that demo doesn't show how good flash is, just that it loaded!
On my Samsung Galaxy Tab flash is nice to have as I can watch the embedded media on the BBC site, but the whole web experience is hampered with pages that have flash content and I don't see the PB being much better.
I think the idea is for employees who are only really doing simple IT tasks. Accessing email, web based applications. Inputting figures, producing charts and statistics.
Or form filling, in the health sector there is a lot of form filling and if you can capture electronically then you can validate input before submitting the data and eliminate data entry.
Of course, a 7 inch tablet is inferior for displaying data and for forms.
Anything with "Play" in the name is going to sound like a toy. Playstation, playschool and so on. The fact that they've called it Playbook and it's aimed at business is an awful bit of branding.
But then RIM have a pretty awful name anyway. With Apple you can say you're an Appler, I'm not going to type what you are if you have a RIM device :)
Wow RIM, talk about shooting your self in the foot by not making the Java SDK central to this device?
You are basically telling all your BB developers that they are second class citizens on this device. Moreover, there isn't any word on whether those apps would even run on that device. This is like the IPAD not being able to run iPhone Apps and all the apps would have to be done using a different SDK.
Maybe I missed the part about your app stores having 100000 apps so you can afford to loose a few developers.
RIM you need all the developers you can get if you hope to remain relevant in the next 3 years.
One interesting feature is the 'modular cavity' which sounds as if field upgrades or function changes will be possible which is a very effective way of keeping it current whereas other competitors would have potentially bring out a new model.
Of course, annual 'amazing, magical' releases are a way one California company apes the automobile companies marketing strategies.
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