Why Blackberry PlayBook could be the most exciting tablet (iPad included)
Sarat Pediredla, the founder and partner of the hedgehog lab, is one of the few to have seen a demo of the new Blackberry PlayBook tablet, and he is impressed.
In a world where everything that is not an iOS tablet is an Android/Chrome OS tablet, the BlackBerry OS introduces a refreshing and all-important third alternative. Yes, it is very similar to iOS (the Mail app on the PlayBook is a striking resemblance of Mail on the iPad) but a first look at the demo reminded me more of WebOS than anything else.
QNX (who made the Operating system for the PlayBook) seems to have been a very capable company and it appears that not only does the BlackBerry Tablet OS look great, it has a solid mobile platform underpinning it.
There is an issue over branding and who the PlayBook is aimed at. I guess that is more of a rhetorical question, as the answer is clearly (from PlayBook's micro-site and spiel) the Enterprise. Therefore, I find it curious that they chose a name like PlayBook for their flagship product in the Enterprise Tablet market.
I will go out on a limb and say that the PlayBook will be an easy sell to Enterprises who have invested hugely in BlackBerry infrastructure with it's immediate integration with BlackBerry servers. I see this spreading quickly in the Enterprise.
It is clear from the demo that BlackBerry wants to pitch this as both a great Enterprise tablet and a cool consumer tablet. A lot of the demo focuses on how "cool" the media capabilities are and a lot of the benefits are squarely aimed at the "iPad crowd". Flash, for example, doesn't exist on the iPad.
Like it or not, the inevitable comparisons with the iPad have already started doing the rounds. I personally will not be swapping my iPad for a PlayBook anytime soon but I did notice that with the device not coming out until early to late 2011, it will effectively be competing with a 2nd Generation iPad that could address most of the current differences.
To me, the PlayBook is a credible alternative to the iPad and it's great to see competition heating up in this space with the Samsung Galaxy Tab adding an Android alternative to the mix.
I am more excited about the PlayBook (for selfish reasons) due to the penetration potential it has in the Enterprise and the business opportunities it presents. However, what is more exciting, is that tablets are here to stay and ready to change the mobile computing landscape.
Sarat Pediredla is founder and partner of the hedgehog lab