Chill out. The only "fact" on any forum is that 99.9% of all posts are someone's opinion. I'm of the opinion that somebody I respect and is in a postion to "know" told me.
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Chill out. The only "fact" on any forum is that 99.9% of all posts are someone's opinion. I'm of the opinion that somebody I respect and is in a postion to "know" told me.
There's what current tablets bring to the table.
iPad: Huge tablet ecosystem second to none including apps and accessories.
Kindle: Tablets sold at cost to generate revenue from purchases.
Android tab: Cheap commodity tablets with a decent selection of apps.
Surface: MS Office
What would a new Playbook bring to the table? Will it have a huge ecosystem for which they can charge iPad prices? No. Will they sell it at cost to make money on selling content? No. Will they price it near cost as a commodity tablet? No. Will it sell? That's the $500 million question.
RIM has always seen Blackberry similar to how Apple sees their products. They see themselves as a high end device maker, that basically rules out them trying to compete with Android tablets. People seem to forget, the original Playbook was priced at $499 and up, and the current price of the LTE Playbook seems to reinforce the belief that's the price point RIM is aiming for. If and when RIM does introduce a new tablet, it won't be a $100-200 device, it will be priced similarly to iPads. At $500 and up, I suspect a lot of potential customers would just opt for an iPad. I'm pretty sure RIM is aware that's the most likely scenario, thus no rumors of new Playbooks in the near future.
1/ A perfect integration (not just "communication") with the brand smartphones and QNX powered devices. Bridge features are expected to go even further that they are today. As an example, imagine your PB is instantly wireless connected to your car infotainment system, giving you access to any feature it can offer (audio, video, messaging/agenda/contacts (from your phone connected), car diagnostics, ...): I believe it's a good preview of what a "platform" is. That platform notion is what BB10 will bring to the scene ... and no one compete.
Also remember it offers (for FREE !) BB10 to users that can't/don't want (yet) to upgrade to BB10 on their BlackBerry OS7 and former devices ... the flow will be there ... even with your 9320 or 9900 [pinch of salt : we don't really know how it will interact via bridge with pre-BB10 devices].
2/ PlayBook powered by BB10 will offer a much more exciting experience than current PB with PB OS2. For companies, it's a real opportunity to replace laptops, for many users (balance/security is the key here). For Joes, I believe the multimedia capabilities (incl. web/HTML5 capabilities) and games will be very attractive.
I don't believe PB will sell as much as iPads in the near (or even mid) future. But they do have a place to stand in.
Let's drop a number : 8 millions (10% users base) by the end of 2013 sounds "natural" to me.
That is probably what they were hoping when the playbook first came out, but that didn't happen and I think that they will keep well away from tablets for quite some time until they have moved past their first refreshes of bb10 handsets which are obviously a year or more away because neither the sales nor the margins are there to make it worthwhile for them to release another tablet as you have the ipad being about the only one that can charge a premium for the hardware and then everything else is selling near cost and making money back on the ecosystem.
I suspect that we will see a phablet (hate that term) long before we see a new playbook, it first their range better as it could co-exist with the normal bb10 handsets without stealing sales and would still get carrier subsidies.
Why a new one ? Current fits perfectly with BB10.
Edited : because it's in the title me dumb a$$ ... sry.
You guys are living in la la land. RIM could reasonably be broken up by end of 2013 to "unlock shareholder value" as they always say... If the BB10 phone launch is not stellar the last thing on everyone's mind is going to be a tablet.
In fact if there are rumours of a new tablet, I'd run for the hills.
Is there anything seriously wrong with the current Playbook where they can't just refresh it with a slightly faster version that has BB10 preloaded? When BB10 comes out I think the Playbook reviews will be revisited and the playbook will get a much higher score.
And they already has a few Playbooks in the hands of consumers that will be their first experience with BB10.
However, the playbook has a resolution of 1024×600, which is not one of the screen resolutions developers are expected to code for.
That's not a good sign.
Maybe Heins is setting the expectation of a shift away from smartphones and tablets towards his vision of a mobile computing platform for other industries. Maybe in 2013 Research In Motion will drop out of the smartphone, tablet, and messaging services industry to play in the embedded space as BlackBerry as we know it sinks into irrelevance. Who in Hades knows. Stop asking stupid questions for which nobody on this forum can provide the definitive answer. I still think BlackBerry OS 10 is a work-in-progress and Heins is hoping they can pull off a 1Q2013 release but he has to talk up the product so certain fanbois can "squirt in their pants", "orgasm", and otherwise "p-iss with excitement" according to some of the postings on this forum.
The only thing I know for certain is if Research In Motion screws up the launch and delivery of BlackBerry 10 the financial markets and the media will hand the CEO his genitals. Not a pretty picture.
Because it's phones that will make or break RIM. Their resources and attention are likely focused 100% on BB10 bbs, and rightly so. I suspect that should bb10 be even a moderate success, that then, and only then, will we start hearing rumours of a new Playbook. And I think that's exactly how RIM should be doing it.
if 10% of the prospective BB10 users will buy a Playbook as well, that will probably 10 fold the Playbook sales already, so that's why the focus is on BB10......
So basically, Playbook brings.... nothing to the table, but you expect them to sell 8 million $500 PBs in a year?
what the Playbook brings to the table is that it is a tablet.........a QNX ecosystem tablet if you want to dress it up a bit....
I love the PlayBook and hope to see another soon enough, but all focus should and is on the launch of BB10. I hope for an announcement at BlackBerry World of the next tablet, that would be incredible.
If thats the way you think about it then in your opinion does bb10 stand a chance against the competition?
Looking at the war between Apple and Android it seems clear that the software is declaring the winner and also the smartphone is tied to the tablet.
OS has been destroying ICS and JB despite Googles effort to pump up the hardware specs.
Resent example the ipad mini 7" that has strangely around the same specs as the PlayBook (two year old) and 25-50% higher price and is killing all quadcore Google competition.
RIM already has a decent device hardware wise in the PB they fixed the price so now it's up to the new software to either gonna make it or break it.
In my opinion RIM is taking the right road to create a successful product, smartphone / table.
I would buy a 10" Playbook from RIM over any other tablets any day. Maybe iPad as second choice.
Actually taking a closer look at gsmarena sepcs of the two devices there seems to be almost identical, A9 1ghz for both devices, sgx543 for the mini sgx540 on the PB, even the same camera 5mb but of' course the PB has better peripherals than most tablets out there with its 3mb front camera, dual mics and and 4 stereo speakers, my laptop doesn't have all these. (when Skype or video BBM first work on this device its gonna blow everybody's mind)
It's a gem of a device why change it? If apple can sell it even at that price why not BB, especially if BB10 is what is expected to be.
Is the current Playbook going to be updated to BB10? It is not one of the screen resolutions that developers are supposed to code for.
Maybe the better question is: is there a backward compatibility problem for RIM if they push BB10 to the PlayBook? They really can't afford to nerf any existing apps for such an upgrade. The work effort is not going to be zero. Even if compatibility is expected to be extremely high, someone would need to confirm the hypothesis with actual apps.
Does anyone know more about the realities of BB10 on PB?
7" is too small. I will never buy it. To big for my pocket. To small to use casually. Even 8" would be better. I don't think 10" is necessary but I think they will make one that size. Just stop with this 7" non sense.
FWIW: I can't find a playbook in the USA or else I would get one.
It is confirmed as coming, but no eta with most expecting it to be quite some time after the first couple of bb10 devices due to it being much lower priority.
Err, your second sentence totally contradicts your first one.
Besides that, I personally find that I prefer my 7" tablet a lot of the time to my 10" one as it is just so much more comfortable to hold it one-handed when consuming content, surfing etc on it and indeed I would replace the larger tablet with an 8.9" model if anyone besides amazon gets round to doing one with a high-rez screen since that would be the best balance of usability, weight etc for me by a long way I should think.