Blackberry Playbook will run Android and Java Applications

Along with Blackberry OS ones and Adobe AIR applications too. That's some versatile machine. Android Apps will have to be certified and submitted to RIM's own app store, Blackberry World, basically the same process current Blackberry OS Apps go through.

I wish they'd hurry up and release the damn thing.

It will be realeased on 19th April in USA but in June over here. It will cost the same as ipad2 (at least in USA).

Or a fugly mess, depending on how well it's implemented; I wonder how all this "everything and the kitchen sink" approach will impact on battery life, let alone user experience etc... We'll see, but even if the world had never seen an iPad or an iPad 2, pitching a 7" PlayBook at the same price as a 10" Xoom may be a bit optimistic IMO <shrug>

Blackberry Playbook early reviews..

NY Times
Crackberry

Summary : "Shtop, thish tablet ish not ready yet!"

Jon

I don’t do predictions, but breaking the habit of a lifetime I think PlayBook will flop.

RIM Boss steered “off message” by BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones - it’s at the bottom of the page.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters ... _ipad.html

He said that being asked about security problems in some countries was “unfair”. The last video on the page.

Playbook partial sellout in the US.
Sells out in some places, not in others. at the shop that set up catering only to find two people turned up to buy one.

AT&T Users can't get email on their Playbook even if they have a Blackberry, because AT&T havn't approved the 'Bridge' app in time.
AT&T are utterly useless. I mean, I think the UK telcos are pretty shoddy but in comparison...

UK retailers announce playbook plans
Although nobodies saying exactly when or how much for yet...

Jon

Some more predictions:

Apple will make more money from iPad accessories than RIM will make from PlayBook;

Flash will continue to be a complete dog and will never work well on this or any other tablet;

Developers will ignore Playbook, because of poor sales and lack of native APIs;

A year, and even two, from now iPad will be the only device with any significant market presence.

Are you going to change your name to "mystic sock"

If it runs Android and Java apps, then there have already been developed a metric f*ckload of applications that should work. It's just down to RIM to certify them for "Blackberry World". If they don't, then there's no one else to blame.

The situation is a little... complicated. It runs Android apps, but they have to be recompiled for it with certain restrictions. So it won't run all android apps. You'd assume they'd be tweaking the emulation so that the most popular ones would definitely work, but then these are the guys who put out a tablet computer without an email client on it. It will certainly run most java apps, which is a more of an issue in the corporate world than the consumer one, but the restriction of only installing through the Blackberry app world still applies. It seems very much to me that they've installed the Java runtime to try to keep the enterprise market happy, and the Android emulation to try to keep the consumer space happy.

It's a cliche but a true one that security and convenience exist on a continuum and any system must find the 'sweet spot' along that line where it has to exist. Android is very much towards the 'convenience' end of this spectrum, whereas iOS is more towards the middle (note : I don't mean to imply the middle is where you should be, any situation/system must find it's own point and what fits one won't fit another). It seems to me right now the Playbook has ended up too near the 'security' end, even for the enterprise market. I don't think, for example, the "we're never going to store email on this thing in case it gets lost" decision that led to BB Bridge and the lack of a local email client is at all a sane decision, tbh.

Jon

I don't think there is anything fundamentally wrong with the playbook. It seems like a very good platform, admittedly rushed to the market but which tablet wasn't?

It doesn't have email client or calendar? RIM says they will be available in 60 days.
The user experience isn't polished yet? It can be fixed with updates in the future.

Playbook has plenty of strong points so I think it is far too soon to write it off just yet. The segment is very new and nothing has been decided. Current frontrunners won't necessarily end up as winners. Just remember how everybody was writing off android phones not so long ago, now they outsell everything else...

Well, fair enough but you have to live in the now, not the was. The fact is RIM are launching the PlayBook into a market where there is already a mature product (the iPad 2) and where there's at least one other competitor who is in a similar boat but has a head start (Android 3). I read an observation somewhere that basically summarised this as follows : launching first gives you the luxury of launching an unrefined product. Launching second, third or fourth doesn't.


So what's your incentive to buy it now rather than in 60 days? Especially if you know that if nobody buys it, 60 days from now it'll have had it's price cut? And what if between now and then a better product from a competitor (like the HP tablet) comes along?


What we don't know is what RIM's criteria for 'success' for the PlayBook is. How many units do they expect to sell, how much profit are they making per unit? Are they using it as a 'halo' product to sell service subscriptions against? Apple famously say they care more about profit margin than market share - without knowing what RIM wants the playbook to do in the market, we can only judge it's 'success' in the broadest terms.

Jon

I'm trying to work out why they've launched it now, instead of pushing the release back 2 months to get it nearer being finished would've been a better bet, surely?