RIM today said that its next update for its Blackberry Playbook OS 2.0. The senior vice president David J. Smith said that the launch will be delayed for the Blackberry Playbook OS 2.0 until they are confident that it has fully met the expectations of its users, developers and enterprise customers.
Now there are significant implications for this delay. Blackberry Messenger will be deferred to “a subsequent Blackberry Playbook OS release” which is confusing as it could mean v2.0. An alternative is to use the Blackberry Bridge feature which requires the use of a compatible Blackberry handset.
Around 200,000 Playbook tablets have been sold by RIM in the last quarter which is a fraction of what Apple has sold. A number of retailers in the UK had started to cut the price of the Playbook to a mere £239, down from £399 at launch.