RIM Unveils BlackBerry Playbook Tablet
Research in Motion co-CEO Mike Lazaridis had his “one more thing” moment today at the company's 2010 DevCon conference. Near end of his opening keynote address today Lazaridis, after making a number of big announcements — in-app payments for BlackBerry apps …
Context & Ripple Effects
The unveiling caps a six-month pivot for RIM. In April, co-CEO Mike Lazaridis publicly questioned whether a market even existed for tablets and touch-only phones; by last week the Wall Street Journal was reporting RIM prepping its answer to the iPad, and today that answer arrived on stage at DevCon 2010.
The announcement lands alongside an in-app payments framework for BlackBerry apps, which matters because a tablet without a developer economy is a demo device — RIM is trying to stand up both the hardware and the monetization story at once. The pickup from MarketWatch and InformationWeek within a day shows how much of the industry's attention is pinned on any credible iPad challenger.
First-order effects
- BlackBerry developers get a second hardware target and, with the same-day in-app payments announcement, a way to charge for content inside apps — the pieces needed to start building a tablet app catalog.
- Apple now faces a challenger aimed squarely at the enterprise and carrier relationships where BlackBerry already has installed credibility, rather than at consumer mindshare.
Second-order effects
- Carrier and corporate buyers gain leverage: with two credible tablet vendors courting them, pricing and enterprise-management terms become negotiable rather than dictated by a single supplier.
- Every other smartphone OS vendor under pressure to show a tablet strategy of its own, since the 'does anyone even want one' argument RIM itself made in April has effectively been retired by its own keynote.
Third-order effects
- Tablets are consolidating as an extension battle between existing mobile platforms rather than a standalone product category — the winner will likely be decided by app ecosystems and developer tooling, not hardware specs alone.
- If enterprise IT treats the PlayBook as a natural extension of BlackBerry management infrastructure, tablet adoption could follow the smartphone playbook of selling through CIOs instead of retail shelves — a structural split in how tablets reach buyers.
The trend: Smartphone platform vendors are extending their operating systems into tablets to contest Apple's iPad head start, with developer ecosystems and in-app commerce emerging as the real battleground.