BlackBerry Playbook

The huge popularity of the iPad has led other manufacturers of mobile devices to build tablets of their own. In a lot of cases this has meant that tablets are being built with no clear market for them. That definitely appears to be the case with the Blackberry Playbook.

It was of course just a matter of time before BlackBerry got into the tablet game but there are some questions about how well they will do in the market. The problem is that the Playbook is not particularly good at the play part, which does make the choice of the name a little peculiar. Blackberry have of course built their business on making smart phones that are well designed for use by business people. The Playbook follows this pattern it is great for things like giving power point presentations and the security is of course excellent as you would expect on a Blackberry but this may not be the best option for a tablet.

The problem that Blackberry have is that they have developed a tablet that is well designed for business use but nobody uses a tablet for business. The vast majority of tablets are being used for things like playing games, watching videos and reading ebooks. These are areas that the Playbook struggles with. The main reason is that there are not a lot of apps available for it, nowhere near as many as you would find for other tablets. The result is that you are somewhat limited in what you can do with the Playbook.

The design of the Playbook is a little bit dull by most people's reckoning although this is pretty common with Blackberry. The screen is quite small at just seven inches which does make the playbook easy to use when you are on the go. The downside is that the screen is on the small side for things like watching videos. This is another example of designing the product for the wrong user. One thing that Blackberry did get wrong was the keyboard. On their smart phones they always include a full keyboard which turns out to be a good thing. As a tablet the Playbook has to rely on a touch screen keyboard and it has proven to very difficult to use.

Assessing the Blackberry Playbook is a bit of a challenge because it seems to be designed for the wrong users. If you are looking for a tablet that you can use for business purposes this may very well be the best option, the only problem is that we have no idea who would need a tablet for business purposes. There is little that you can do with the Playbook that you couldn't do with one of the company's smart phones. The things that most people do with a tablet the Playbook does not do well. The result is that they have developed a good product for which there does not appear to be a market.