Thursday, October 27, 2011

RIM BlackBerry PlayBook OS Update Delayed Until February 2012

BlackBerry PlayBookResearch in Motion has found a new way to tick off its customers, this time by announcing that the update for the BlackBerry PlayBook OS won’t be released until February 2012.

PlayBook owners have been waiting on the OS 2.0 update for months, hoping that they’ll finally get native support for e-mail, calendar, address book and even BlackBerry Messenger features. Currently folks are forced to utilize BlackBerry Bridge in order to access their email, calendars, Blackberry Messenger or any other data with their PlayBook tablet.

On top of delaying the PlayBook OS update, RIM stated that when the update does roll out in February of next year, it won’t include the popular BlackBerry Messenger service.

That’s kind of funny, considering RIM started out the announcement by saying, “As much as we’d love to have it in your hands today, we’ve made the difficult decision to wait to launch BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 until we are confident we have fully met the expectations of our developers, enterprise customers and end-users.”

Wouldn’t that mean that the 2.0 update would have to include BlackBerry Messenger in order to meet the expectations of developers, enterprise customers and end-users?

Yes. Yes, it does.

Frustrated BlackBerry Playbook users aren’t being shy about voicing their opinion on the matter and have taken to leave comments on The Official BlackBerry Blog entry posted on Tuesday regarding the announcement:
This is not acceptable.  You just lost a loyal customer.
~ Dustin Harding

This is the last nail in your coffin RIM. I WAS a firm believer in you but I'm sick of playing the waiting game. Either keep your promises or don't mention anything at all. Bye bye Bold 9900 / PlayBook, hello iPhone 4S / iPad.
~ Antirim

We'll, it's been a fun 6 months of "it's coming". Time to go somewhere where it's already arrived.You'll find my playbook on ebay.
~ Jay Tee

I have been a long time RIM Shareholder and Blackberry User. Over the past couple years I have been loyal and patient but with all the recent delays and mis-steps I am finally moving on. If RIM is losing me (the perfect Customer) business must be getting pretty bad. Good luck with you future efforts. I will be watching from my iphone.
~ Hedgesw

you should really look into what the public is saying about you on crackberry..... i cant believe you are doing this to your loyal customers
~ Imenu

So much for the PlayBook OS update potentially generating a fresh batch of interest just in time for the holiday season.

The Blackberry Playbook has pretty much been a flop since it was launched earlier this year and appears to be unable to shake the cloud of negative reviews. Only 200,000 PlayBooks were shipped last quarter, which is down from the 500,000 shipped in the previous quarter.

Recently major retailers like Best Buy and Staples took a hint from the HP TouchPad fire sale craze and attempted to spark similar interest by slashing PlayBook prices by $200. That didn’t work all that well, considering the PlayBook still ended up costing $299-499 depending on the model and also sparked rumors that the PlayBook was headed towards the tablet graveyard to rest in peace alongside the HP TouchPad.

Hopefully Research in Motion will wake up and get their act together soon; otherwise investors just may give the board the boot.

Photo Credit: bertconcepts

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