BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins said in an interview with Bloomberg News that he expects BlackBerry to be the "absolute leader in mobile computing" in five years when tablets would no longer be popular. "In five years I don't think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore. Maybe a big screen in your workspace, but not a tablet as such. Tablets themselves are not a good business model." Heins is ignoring the tremendous success of Apple, which has catapulted as the world's most valuable tech company after releasing the iPad in 2010. BlackBerry's first foray in the business, the PlayBook, failed.
What Else You Need To Know
- BlackBerry released the 7-inch PlayBook in April 2011 but met lukewarm market reception because of its iPad-like $499 price tag, lack of a native app for e-mails and just a small number of third-party apps available for download.
- Apple, which sells the iPad mini starting at $329 and the full-sized iPad starting at $499, sold 19.5 million units of the iPad in the last quarter.
Other sources
By any real measure, the PlayBook was and is a failed product.- Darrell Etherington, TechCrunch
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