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BlackBerry World 2012: Thorsten Heins signals a shift in RIM's tablet strategy. More enterprise tool than consumer hardware

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BlackBerry World 2012: Thorsten Heins signals a shift in RIM's tablet strategy. More enterprise tool than consumer hardware
Remarked on in passing, but during his 'Meet the press' session, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins signaled a subtle, but significant change of direction in the company's tablet strategy.

RIM launched its PlayBook tablet in April 2011 to public indifference and press criticism over a perceived lack of features compared to BlackBerry smartphones.

It then booked a $485 million pre-tax accounting provision over unsold inventory.

Seeding the ground

Since then it's been on a strong industry drive, giving out over 20,000 units to get developers working on the PlayBook Tablet OS, which is a sub-set of the forthcoming BlackBerry 10 OS.

However, despite updating many of those 'missing features' and adding new ones - notably with the version 2.0 OS update - PlayBook is yet to make any dent in the consumer world dominated by Apple's iPad, Amazon's Kindle Fire and some Samsung devices.

Asked whether there would be a new version of the PlayBook, Heins replied in this manner.

"It's hard to make a tablet successful as a pure hardware play."

Look beyond

His point seems to be that treating tablets as - say, laptops - is wrong.

As best demonstrated by Apple, it's the combination of hardware and software that makes tablets valuable; something Android vendors other than Amazon are clearly struggling with.

In RIM's context, this means future PlayBook's will be much more integrated into an ecosystem embracing hardware, local software and cloud-based services i.e. more BlackBerry-like.

Work tools

In addition, while Heins revealed that 4G PlayBooks will be released, he continued that RIM's tablet strategy had shifted to ensure future devices worked well in the enterprise sector, first and foremost.

This is part of RIM's wider structural reorganisation to ensure it focuses on its core markets, one of which is enterprise customers.

Of course, that doesn't mean there won't be a consumer PlayBook running BlackBerry 10 at some point. Only that RIM won't be getting into a direct tablet battle with iPads, Galaxy Tabs and Notes et al.

"[Tablets are] an on-ramp to mobile computing," Heins added, suggesting that while they have a part to play in RIM's future, it's not going to be a starring role.
Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.