RIM, the maker of Blackberry business phones and the Playbook tablet is learning it the hard way that tablets aren’t a magic wand. RIM went on a single foot and touted how the Playbook would change the tablets game and conquer the newly created market. The 7″ tablet was said to be powerful, running a new webOS copycat operating system called QNX and even support Android apps with a little hack. So how did the PlayBook fair? TheVerge reports that RIM is reporting a $485 million loss is Q3, attributed to the poor sales of the PlayBook.
No wonder. Lack of apps (yes they had a half baked FB App), dependence of Blackberry smartphone and over confidence did it for RIM. But the major factor remains the iPad. No Android tablet, webOS attempt from HP or Windows 7 tablets have managed to get traction and we are already nearing 2 years of iPad. Apple made a device, kept it simple, facilitated a lot of killer apps and sold millions of iPads. Competitors tried the my car faster strategy, threw in better cameras, CPUs and what not, only to fail.
RIM is reporting decent sales of smartphones and there is optimism on the upcoming BBX Blackberry. PlayBook is selling for a heavy discount in US and that would ensure that many people have the QNX operating system, we doubt if that helped HP TouchPad (webOS), but since Blackberry is sticking to the platform and not abandoning it, there is hope that they would extract some developer / consumer traction here. But wiping out half billion dollars on a product that failed due to your arrogance? Doesn’t really inspire that things would turnaround for RIM in 2012. Instead of saying that we screwed up by thinking that tablets would magically turn us around, RIM is saying that the tablet market is in infancy? Your struggle is in its infancy we would say!