For a couple of months now there has been some buzz surrounding the upcoming Blackberry tablet known as the Playbook. Is it for real or just a lot of hype over nothing, like some of the recent phones from RIM? This CES provided a hands-on which finally gave people a chance to find out.
This relatively small 5×7 device has created a rather large hubbub in recent times and since I haven’t had the chance to play with one I decided to see what the lucky few have had the chance had to say about it.
Frankly I have been a bit surprised. I expected a bit of a downer, given the recent spate of bad luck RIM has had with new products. But I have seen the gaming, multimedia, and video conferencing capabilities called “sexy”. It has been deemed a “flash loving” device, which immediately separates it from the Apple iPad. In short, I have not found any real negatives in any of the major reviews I have read.
Of course, with or without Flash, it still has an uphill battle to compete with the iPad. We have also seen a proliferation of Android and Windows 7 tablets at CES, which also pose a direct threat to the Playbook. While Windows 7 has been widely maligned as a tablet OS the ones I have seen in the past few days may change that sentiment.
We don’t have an exact release date for the Playbook yet, but it doesn’t appear to be too far off. If they can get to market in a timely manner and beat a lot of the other tablets that debuted this past week then they have a shot to at least find a spot in the market, if not take a decent portion of it.