Former RIM executive Raymond Reddy reportedly believes that the upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook will flop. In an interview with Business Insider, Reddy — who was in corporate development with RIM until 2008 when he left to start his own company — is said to have voiced several concerns surrounding the PlayBook that could apparently lead to a D.O.A. launch. His main concerns, according to the report, are timing, developer support and the platform’s reliance on tethering with BlackBerry phones. Reddy thinks the PlayBook may be late due to difficulties RIM is having while porting and tweaking the QNX operating system on which the device is based. He also thinks that the tablet won’t have many apps available at launch, and that the requirement to tether the PlayBook to a BlackBerry phone in order to use certain functionality could be off-putting for potential users. The BlackBerry PlayBook will be RIM’s first tablet device and it is expected to launch later this quarter.
UPDATE: A representative of Raymond Reddy emailed BGR to indicate that the original headline and sentiment conveyed in the Business Insider piece linked below misrepresented Reddy’s sentiment. It appears that Reddy never said the PlayBook would not succeed as was originally reported by Business Insider, though the source article has since been updated without notation.
