Tablet tribulations
Research in Motion's eagerly anticipated PlayBook tablet's OS could find its way onto BlackBerry smartphones in the future, according to the firm's co-CEO.
At The WSJ's D: Drive into mobile conference, Mike Lazaridis said that the PlayBook's OS will feature in BlackBerry smartphones in the next decade, The WSJ reported.
While reportedly describing the PlayBook as ‘the perfect size,' (no doubt in reference to Steve jobs' previous criticisms of 7 inch tablets) he admitted that RIM is also planning different sized tablets.
It would appear that RIM's strategy for the next decade relies on the success of the PlayBook with its "complete mobile computing system," and Lazaridis said: "All of this is coming together to set up BlackBerry for the next decade."
Apparently the tablet is still set to launch in Q1 of 2011, but Lazaridis reportedly said that when BlackBerrys begin to sport multi-core processors, "they'll all be running the Playbook platform," in a move that he hopes will catapult RIM into "the next decade of mobile computing".
When questioned about the Canadan smartphone maker's global strategy, Lazaridis seemed to imply that Blackberry will continue to focus on growing its market share in developing markets with budget-ish offerings, possibly without 3G and 4G technologies.
Interestingly, RIM seemed keen to distance itself from Apple as Lazaridis reportedly said Apple has upgraded a mobile platform to suit a tablet, whereas RIM has built a ‘mobile computing platform' that differs from its Blackberry set-up.
In a jibe at Apple's CEO Steve Jobs, Lazaridis reportedly said: "We're all using Flash on our PCs. We're all using Flash on our Macs. Why wouldn't we expect Flash to run our tablet....There's all this content out there. Why would you limit yourself?"
