Research in Motion has had one crappy month and it got worse on Tuesday. The company confirmed in a blog post on its official web site that the planned release of the 2.0 OS update for its Blackberry Playbook tablet won"t be released by the end of the year. Instead, RIM is now targeting a February 2012 timeline for the OS 2.0 launch.
That"s yet another case of bad news for a company that just doesn"t need it at the moment. RIM is already smarting with the online issues that crippled many of the features of its Blackberry smartphones for a few days earlier this month. RIM has offered Blackberry users a number of free apps to download as compensation.
Then there"s the launch of the iPhone 4S, which may be causing lots of Blackberry owners to finally make the switch and dump those smartphones in order to get their hands on Apple"s popular smartphone. Add this newest delay in the OS update to the Blackberry Playbook, which isn"t selling well to begin with, and a pattern is emerging.
RIM doesn"t seem to know what to do at this point. It can clearly see that the once highly popular Blackberry devices (remember when they were called "Crackberries"?) now seem old fashioned compared to the iPhone and Android-based smartphones. The Playbook is pretty much a failure but RIM is sticking with it anyway, unlike HP who quickly pulled the plug on its TouchPad tablet once sales didn"t meet expectations