Is the BlackBerry Playbook RIM’s Best Play or its Downfall?

In the early 2000, BlackBerry was the most coveted business tools on the market. Everyone who wanted to be taken seriously in the boardroom owned one or two BlackBerrys. Apple was struggling to regain its foothold and the iPhone was nothing more than a glorified piece of gadgetry. The drawing card for BlackBerry was of-course that it offered the kind of security no other phone manufacturer was able to offer. These were great days and everyone was raving about the revolution that RIM had started in the mobile phone world, and hence the term Smartphone was coined.
Apple seemed nonchalant about it, taking their time to develop one product at a time, the iPhone, and then the iPad. In between that, RIM flooded the market with various phone designs from the Curve range, to the Storm, the Bold, and the Torch. Ultimately what we now have as the first tablet to come out of RIM’s BlackBerry stable, the BlackBerry PlayBook. The race was spurred on by processor speeds, applications, and security. The simple software that RIM ran the BlackBerry platforms on was just too difficult for other people, and hence the need to find newer, innovative software program that no other manufacturer had. The QNX, built solely for use in the BlackBerry PlayBook.
RIM had to beef up on their hardware especially as they were entering foreign markets. The Flash software might be worth getting excited over with Flash Video enabling users to watch a broader range of videos, but Flash is meant to be a differentiating factor, one that carries a lot of weight for a lot of people. Going for the 50 million existing Blackberry customers was something that had given RIM cause to believe that the Playbook would do just as well. The BlackBerry PlayBook accessories are another reason behind this. The problem is that, not all of the existing customer base needs much more than what they already have on their handhelds.
The lack of applications is annoying. Accessing your emails by bridging with another BlackBerry is tedious to say the least and tedious is not a word that most BlackBerry customers associate with the brand. Can BlackBerry's PlayBook take over where the Apple iPad failed to? It hasn’t looked that way. RIM can use all the technology that nobody else has used, but it’s still struggling to get over the shadow cast by the Apple iPad. The tech world had been waiting for this with bated breath and, it seems there is a lot more that RIM, the makers BlackBerry PlayBook, need to do. However, they still encourage you to buy BlackBerry PlayBook as they promise great updates and service.