Thanks in large part to the success of iPad, 2010 is shaping up to be the year of the tablet. Apple succeeded in resurrecting a moribund form factor and endowing it with new life and a broader appeal. Much of that appeal stems from familiarity: the iPad is not only immediately recognizable to the millions of iPhone and iPod users but also draws from the same pool of content (music, games, video, apps) on which owners of other Apple products have come to rely.
The next 12 months will see a raft of tablet introductions as other manufacturers rush to play catch-up with Apple and capture a piece of this emerging market. For the most part, the tablet market is likely to emerge as another battleground in the increasingly fierce mobile OS war between Apple and Google. As in the smartphone market, Apple has some advantage because the iTunes and App stores have a larger pool of content than Android Market, but the increasing scale of Android devices is helping giving the Android content marketplace greater appeal.
A wild card in the tablet market is BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM). Today it introduced the PlayBook, a tablet running on a new OS derived from QNX, the software company RIM acquired from Harman International in April (at the time, the acquisition seemed to herald a push into the automotive telematics space).
As with its smartphones, RIM faces unique challenges as it prepares to enter the tablet market. Although BlackBerry holds the largest share of the US smartphone market, and its devices often rank among the top 10 best-selling phones (meaning that many consumers are buying them), RIM is nonetheless associated with the enterprise. As such, it faces the perennial issue of how to balance the needs of its core business customers with the differing demands of its consumer audience.
In a recent blog post, AMD’s Pat Moorhead shared his “wish list” of features he’d like to see in a RIM tablet. It includes access to enterprise applications (network and SharePoint access, printing to networked computers, use of corporate web apps such as budgeting and expenses and BlackBerry apps such as e-mail, calendar and address book), video conferencing and peer-to-peer resource sharing with BlackBerry smartphones for things like phone calls and wireless tethering.
Some of these features would undoubtedly serve consumer tablet use as well, but would also edge the tablet closer to a computing device rather than a portable entertainment and media consumption device. There’s nothing wrong with that approach per se. In fact, unlike the smartphone market, where device size and specs are fairly well established, tablet manufacturers have more latitude to experiment with different screen sizes and device features. Some tablets will be more smartphone-like while others will be more computer-like.
But satisfying both sets of demands equally well is difficult – a lesson RIM has learned with the latest BlackBerry smartphones. A new and untested OS and RIM’s somewhat spotty history with touchscreen user interfaces represent additional hurdles. Appealing entertainment features combined with a robust enterprise tool set could make for a crossover hit, but there are still many question marks.
UPDATE: PlayBook is the official name of RIM’s new tablet. Full specs available here. As expected, the PlayBook attempts to satisfy both constituencies, but will enterprise customers be tempted to “Play” along or throw out the PlayBook? The feature set says yes, but the name says no.
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