“Amateur hour is over.”
That, RIM’s rather macho slogan for its new tablet, the Playbook, seems more embarrassing by the day.
Firstly, the Playbook sold a measly 250,000 units in its first month, and is projected to sell 500,000 for the quarter. The iPad, upon its release, was moving an average of 1 million units a month.
Even without the boastful marketing lines (and the rest of the chaotic launch), the Playbook appears to have limped into the tablet market. Because of that, American observers believe RIM is dead.
I just got my hands on a Playbook this week, and had high hopes of liking it – both because I think RIM is a cool Canadian technology company and I’d like a more level the playing field with the hegemonic Apple.
First, what I did like: The 7-inch screen and compact size makes the Playbook truly portable. Having zero buttons on the entire thing takes getting used to, but is ultimately pretty cool.
Reading or watching anything on the Playbook is amazing too. It has an HDMi output to link into televisions and looks good on the big screen.
But the Playbook is years behind the iPad it simply does not compete. Any objective critic will say the same (and they have). (Pretty much everything that was predicted at this SXSW Interactive panel is true.)
The fundamental problem is one of platforms. The Playbook’s is and always will be inferior.
That’s because this whole iPad-Playbook war is taking place on Apple’s turf. The iProducts created this craze for apps, and Blackberry, instead of standing its ground on its enterprise/business solutions, has been drawn in to app battlefield. Where it just gets clobbered.
So, that’s no Google apps, no New York Times, no Flixster – most of the apps you’ve heard about in the past three years are not available on the Playbook. Blackberry’s App World will soon include Android apps, but it doesn’t matter. The Playbook already lost the app race.
Furthermore, Blackberry soared to prominence through its email function. The Blackberry smartphone was the “email machine,” remember? Well try sending email on the Playbook. Painful as all hell. What happened?
RIM says native email will arrive in an update – possibly this summer – but already it’s such a major oversight. Blackberry needs to improve its email client – like, before launch.
If the Playbook is ever to beat out the iPad, it needs to prove itself vital to business. Not having a native email on its tablet is suicide in that market.
Overall, though, the Playbook is not necessarily a flawed device. There’s lots that it can do, and lots it might do in the future.
As I’ve said before, it has a relatively wide-open platform for development – notably including Flash, which is banished from the iPad. It’s just there’s no one developing at the moment.
So now the Playbook seems in a vicious cycle: no apps means no users, no users means no developers, no developers means no apps, ad infinitum. Hopefully RIM gets it together enough to break that loop.
Tweet me about the Playbook here: twitter.com/joshuaerrett
