I Have Doubts

Clayton Morris:

Let’s be clear, no one doubts that BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion can build a killer business tablet — but for some reason the company hasn’t.

I’ve been using the PlayBook for a few days now and found a laundry list of shortcomings: no email, no calendar, no contacts, no 3G cellular service, very few apps. The list goes on. Sure you can get some of these features if you pair it with your existing BlackBerry phone, but come on — this stuff should be baked right in. 

Let me go on the record: I doubt that RIM can build a killer business tablet.

Hardware: sure. OS, now that they own QNX? Sure. But RIM has no track record of creating, maintaining, and growing a great application platform, and neither does QNX. Their various solutions for the PlayBook are Air apps (an Adobe platform), HTML5 web apps (an open platform), and emulated Android apps (a Google platform). Mark my words: a killer tablet (“business” or otherwise) needs killer native apps. I don’t think RIM understands that, because if they did, they wouldn’t have released this turd to the public.

★ Monday, 18 April 2011