By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla
Despite earlier reports that the BlackBerry 10 OS, now running on the Z10 and Q10 smrtphones, would breathe new life into the PlayBook tablet, BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins has confirmed that the company will not pursue porting BB10 for the PlayBook.
This is bad news for users of the 7-inch tablet who have been holding out for a feature refresh as well as a more unified experience across BlackBerry devices. The writing has been on the wall for the PlayBook after Heins said there was no future in tablets. The PlayBook was also a remant of RIM's 'old regime', brought to market in the dark days before Heins took over the reins of the troubled company.
Despite being a powerful and innovative product when it launched in 2011, the PlayBook's history has been fraught with unfortunate events.
Initially overpriced, it failed to capture the market dominated by the iPad. The initial lack of email and BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) doomed the device and various waves of price drops made it appear inadequate to the public at large. This latest news in the wake of BlackBerry's announcement points to the end-of life for the 7-inch multitasking tablet. Ironically, this comes at time when the 7-inch tablet space is booming with the iPad mini, Nexus 7 and a host of Android tablets competing in the market.
The BlackBerry PlayBook was one of the first tablets with a dual-core processor, it had innovations galore with front facing stereo speakers, direct HDMI out for video, a front-facing camera, a gesture area around its bezel as well as one of the first with 4G-LTE and was built way better than many of the plastic tablets we see in the market today.