BlackBerry PlayBook is ‘dead on arrival’, analyst claims

By on Feb 1, 2011 at 4:05 PM
Tablets February 1, 2011

Wedge Partners principal Brian Blair on Tuesday issued a note to clients that called RIM’s upcoming virgin tablet offering “dead on arrival.” RIM is set to debut the BlackBerry PlayBook next month and opinions of press, bloggers and analysts have been very polarized thus far. Some think the PlayBook will be well received by the enterprise market, projecting that RIM could sell as many as 6 million units in the PlayBook’s first year of availability. Others, however, are not so optimistic. “[The BlackBerry PlayBook] will be sharply inferior to other tablets on the market and consumers won’t buy it,” Blair told CNBC when asked about his note to investors. “They are targeting it at enterprise but I believe very few will actually roll it out widely.” Blair says that the PlayBook’s need to be tethered to a BlackBerry smartphone in order for users to access email, contacts and the calendar is the biggest disappointment surrounding RIM’s upcoming tablet. He goes on to suggest that the PlayBook could potentially end up costing RIM “hundreds of millions of dollars” in “product development, production and related rollout and marketing costs.”

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159 Comments

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  • Nightfox111

    Hey did you hear… the IPad does work with the internet

  • http://twitter.com/DJQStormATL DJQStormATL

    Can we call this yet another “I hate BlackBerry” post. I wonder what they did to piss BGR off so much?!

    Are these the same analyst that said the iphone was going to be coming to Verizon every quarter for the last 4 years?! lol

  • DaSniper

    There is NO mandatory tethering! I’ve heard it from RIM directly. The tethering is ONLY if you want to access the data on the phone. Besides that, it’s a normal tablet on wich you can do everything that you do on an iPad and more. (Real multi-tasking, flash games).

    The only thing that could bug the launch is that the iPad 2 is also next door. It now depends what Apple is going to put against the PlayBook to really see if it can compete!

  • Chaz

    Zach totally hates RIM and everything they do, look at his past posts about anything BlackBerry, total hater. Get a real writing job buddy

  • Anonymous

    gotta love the headline of the CNBC page having “RIMM” spelled wrong.

  • http://caspan.com Caspan

    Again BGR with their infinite wisdom, that knows nothing other then what every one else tells them. No fact checking, no real investigating. Your like a high school rumor mill… You guys are a joke. Zach Epstein if you want to talk to real people about the PlayBook then call RIM to get the facts. I would go toe to toe with you any day to call your bluff on half the BS you write about. You call yourself a reporter of any kind would be sad. Your business card should read “CEO of I trust every word someone says with out checking facts first”

    It’s sad mainly because people look up to you to get the real facts and eat this crap for breakfast and fart it out all day over the office. Then people who actually know what the heck they are talking about have to smell the BS coming from them. Then people like me have to clean up after you and put them in their place with real facts and evidence.

    Opinion is opinion you cannot argue that but facts are facts! and the fact is you suck at reporting on RIM!

  • Hostas

    Check on his holdings in Apple. Pure SPAM!

  • http://twitter.com/#!/dutchtender m j

    this is fair and balanced at it’s best. BGR usually plays the role of RIMM fan boy in the blogosphere, however once in a while it tips the scales in the other direction in the interests of fairness. way to go BGR.

  • http://twitter.com/clientsfromhell Mr Multimedia

    It feels like I will be dead on its arrival, judging by the time its taking to get to market.

    • http://caspan.com Caspan

      Oh god stop whining 4 months and your acting like its been 5 years.

  • http://twitter.com/kstagg Kevin Stagg

    Uhhhhh – web-based mail and calendar? Potential Android Widgets?

  • i > U

    lol @ you

  • Anonymous

    Erm…ahem…didn’t we already know it would be DOA months before?

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