The Killer That Wasn't
Well, it is amazing how much certain companies desperately want the latest Apple-killer; however, the metaphorical road of capitalism has the ditches strewn with the rusting remnants of those who tried and failed. Instead of hyping the next iPad-killers-that-won’t, companies are now urging their useful idiots to describe their products as being Apple-killers without actually saying they are Apple-killers.
Kind of like RIM and BusinessWeek :
Research In Motion Ltd., whose BlackBerry smartphone rose to prominence on Wall Street, is now targeting business customers with a tablet computer to compete with Apple Inc.’s iPad and add a fresh source of revenue.
So it’s going to compete with Apple; but so is every other tablet being “rushed” to market. Ah, but RIM wishes you to know this tablet is different.
The BlackBerry PlayBook, slimmer and lighter than the iPad, supports corporate applications and has advanced data-security features, RIM said yesterday. The device has a 7-inch (18- centimeter) screen, smaller than the iPad’s 9.7-inch display.
“The principal market for this is busy working people,” RIM Co-CEO Jim Balsillie said in an interview in New York. “We’re not trying to say this is all things to all people.”
So the RIM tablet for busy working people is called the PLAY Book. And it’s not an Apple-killer. Are we all on the same page now? We all do understand that RIM isn’t trying to sell this Play Book to anyone with money to spend, right? RIM is very serious about who they want to sell this product to, and frivolous people need not apply. It’s for busy working people only.
Could RIM be any more blatant they would really, really like the PlayBook to be an Apple-killer? Seriously, RIM : this passive-aggressive number isn’t fooling anyone.
“RIM needs a tablet device because it’s necessary for all the device makers to have a multiplatform strategy to compete in the long term,” said Scott Sutherland, an analyst at Wedbush Securities Inc. in Los Angeles. “With new devices coming out on multiple operating systems, it’s as much defensive for RIM to have a tablet as it is offensive.”
Seriously, now : did that make sense to anyone? A tablet is offense and defense? Silly us, we were thinking it was a matter of survival.
But we digress - back to the serious :
RIM may sell 6 million PlayBooks in the first year because the tablet may be better suited for business users and “productivity-centric consumers” than the iPad, Mike Abramsky, an RBC Capital Markets analyst in Toronto, said in a note today.
Yes. Right. Because it isn’t like you can run business productivity apps on the iPad.
Apps like word processors, spreadsheets, tie into Microsoft Exchange servers, or run WebEx.
...
Oh... wait... it’s exactly like that. With printing coming soon, too.
“The smaller screen allows a little more portability than an iPad, making it easier to carry in your briefcase,” Matt Thornton, an analyst at Avian Securities LLC in Boston, said in an interview.
That may be a deliberate strategy to counter the success of the iPad among business users. Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook said in July that 50 percent of Fortune 100 companies are providing the iPad to employees or testing the tablet computer.
We don’t know what RIM is grasping for here, save for a fist-full of straws. We have talked to CEO’s who have used iPads and iPhones and they are of the mind if they were going to use anything with a smaller screen than the iPad, it’s right to the iPhone. They don’t want their means of communication in a briefcase, they want it on their person.
And we don’t know what sort of briefcase upper management at RIM carry, but the iPad didn’t have any difficulty squeezing into a standard briefcase at all.
Just pausing here to recap : Non-Apple-killer-killer, smaller than the iPad and it’s for busy working people. Got it. To this point the PlayBook doesn’t sound like a brilliant idea, but then RIM just seals the deal with this :
The PlayBook has been built with the BlackBerry’s security features that made it popular with governments and Wall Street banks, differentiating the tablet from the competition, Balsillie said. The device’s Web browser is compatible with Adobe Systems Inc.’s Flash technology to allow customers to watch a broader range of video content from the Internet, he said. The iPad doesn’t run Flash video or animation.
By promoting the PlayBook’s compatibility with Flash, “absolutely they’re trying to differentiate some of the advantages of going with the PlayBook platform,” said Ashok Kumar, an analyst at Rodman & Renshaw in San Francisco. He rates the company “market perform.”
In the name of all that is Holy and Good, up to and including the name of God, how can RIM possibly use the words “security” and “flash” in the same breath?
June 2010 : Adobe Fixes Flash Zero-Day with Massive Security Update
July 2009 : Adobe Flash vulnerability affects Flash Player and other Adobe products
Oct 2008 : Adobe Flash Player Multiple Security Issues and Vulnerabilities
Dec 2007 : Flash Player update available to address security vulnerabilities
March 2006 : Adobe Issues Critical Macromedia Flash Update
It absolutely boggles the mind and staggers the imagination that a company the purports to prize and guard customer security would introduce into its systems one of the most insecure pieces of software ever written !
Add to this we don’t know how much the PlayBook will cost, we don’t know it’s media capabilities (RIM isn’t saying), and that if you are not in range of a wi-fi network you can only connect to the internet if you also own a BlackBerry device -
We can’t understand why RIM isn’t touting the PlayBook as the iPad killer. Can’t understand it at all.
