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BlackBerry PlayBook is ‘dead on arrival’, analyst claims

Updated Dec 19th, 2018 7:01PM EST
BGR

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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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Zach Epstein
Zach Epstein Executive Editor

Zach Epstein has been the Executive Editor at BGR for more than 10 years. He manages BGR’s editorial team and ensures that best practices are adhered to. He also oversees the Ecommerce team and directs the daily flow of all content. Zach first joined BGR in 2007 as a Staff Writer covering business, technology, and entertainment.

His work has been quoted by countless top news organizations, and he was recently named one of the world's top 10 “power mobile influencers” by Forbes. Prior to BGR, Zach worked as an executive in marketing and business development with two private telcos.