Hasta La Gadget!

Now that the speculation about BlackBerry’s sale has finally ended, people have moved on to asking what’s next for the Canadian manufacturer. Earlier this year BlackBerry said it will now focus more on the enterprise market, while releasing only four devices each year. The company’s handset business has contributed a lot to the precarious situation BlackBerry finds itself in right now, even its BB10 devices have failed to regain any significant market share particularly in the U.S. BlackBerry tried its luck a few years ago by releasing a tablet, but that turn out to be a colossal flop. Rumors have started circulating about a BlackBerry PlayBook 2, a tablet powered by the company’s new BlackBerry 10 platform.

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BlackBerry PlayBook 2 Rumors Start Circulating original content from Ubergizmo.

The BlackBerry PlayBook will not get upgraded to BlackBerry 10, Thorsten Heins has admitted, describing the experience of the tablet running the latest OS as not satisfactory. Speaking on BlackBerry’s financial results call today, the CEO confessed that after internal testing of BlackBerry 10 on the 7-inch tablet, the decision was made not to offer

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A significant amount of interest has been generated today by a comment made by BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins on how the tablet industry isn’t long for this world. In a follow-up notice from BlackBerry, it’s been made clear that Heins’ words were not meant to initiate a kill notice on any future BlackBerry hardware, that including a possible BlackBerry 10 tablet device.

Of course with the language used by the company, it’s just as likely they’ve got no large-screened BlackBerry devices in the works as it is that they do. With the original BlackBerry PlayBook having stayed in the technology news ranks for far, far longer than it’s been a commercial success. As Heins suggested in the article released earlier today:

“In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore. Maybe a big screen in your workspace, but not a tablet as such. Tablets themselves are not a good business model.” – Heins

In an update sent across the wire by BlackBerry this afternoon, it’s being clarified what the company wants Heins to have meant. As he said previously, they make clear, never say never!

“The comments that Thorsten made yesterday are in line with previous comments he has made about the future of mobile computing overall, and the possibilities that come with a platform like BlackBerry 10. We continue to evaluate our tablet strategy, but we are not making any shifts in that strategy in the short term. When we do have information about our PlayBook strategy, we will share it.” – BlackBerry

So do we expect BlackBerry 10 to be coming to the market in a large-screened tablet in the immediate future? It wouldn’t be a very good bet, that’s for sure. Will there be BlackBerry 10 devices appearing outside the BlackBerry Z10 and keyboard-toting Q10 out on the market today? That you can expect with a bit more confidence.

BlackBerry PlayBook 2 potential gets official reboot is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins has dismissed the long-term potential for tablets, arguing that time is running out on slates and – perhaps still stinging from the PlayBook failure – suggesting they’re a bad business model. Heins, who had been suitably ebullient about the likely success of the recently-released BlackBerry Q10, predicting sales in the tens of millions, was equally critical of tablet options. “In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore” he predicted.

Speaking at the Milken Institute conference in Los Angeles this week, Bloomberg reports, Heins vaguely outlined his reasoning behind the dark prediction. “Maybe [you’ll have] a big screen in your workspace, but not a tablet as such” the CEO suggested. “Tablets themselves are not a good business model.”

You certainly can’t blame Heins for being pessimistic about slates, given the failure of the BlackBerry PlayBook. RIM – as it was known back when the PlayBook was released – launched its 7-inch iPad rival back in 2011 as a companion device to BlackBerry 7 handsets, but the tablet’s limited standalone functionality left consumers non-plussed, and by the time the OS – a precursor of the BlackBerry 10 platform on the Q10 and Z10 – was reworked, the company had already resorted to slashing prices in order to clear shelves.

Heins has since suggested that, while a tablet isn’t necessarily off the table, BlackBerry will need to see the opportunity to do something uniquely special before it’s tempted back into that particular market. “I want to gain as much market share as I can,” he said in an interview back in January 2013, “but not by being a copycat.”

The negativity around slates has led to suggestions that BlackBerry is in no hurry to – and may in fact never – replace the PlayBook, despite originally arguing that one of the strengths of the QNX-based BlackBerry 10 OS is its cross-platform flexibility across phone and tablet-scale devices. One possibility, meanwhile, is that increasingly powerful phones could be used to drive the “big screen in your workplace” Heins mentioned; the Z10 and Q10 already support HDMI output to a separate display.

BlackBerry PlayBook sequel unlikely as Heins slams tablets is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

You might say the week is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workweek, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Weekly Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 7 days — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.

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