RIM responded to reports that its PlayBook is delayed due to battery woes, saying that it's on track with its schedule to optimize the BlackBerry PlayBooks battery life.
Defending its BlackBerry PlayBook, Research In
Motion released a statement Dec. 30, responding to reports that the PlayBook
still has some battery issues to work out.
The reports followed from a
Dec. 28 research note from Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu. "One...
issue we hear the PlayBook needs to improve is its relatively poor battery life
of a few hours, compared to 6 hours for the Samsung Galaxy Tab and 20 hours for
the iPad," Wu wrote, adding that the issue could require some additional
engineering and likely be why RIM has pushed out its launch to the second
quarter of 2011.
Not exactly denying that RIM is working on the
performance of the PlayBooks battery, as much as saying it's on top of the matter,
RIM Media Relations responded:
"Any testing or observation of battery life to date
by anyone outside of RIM would have been performed using pre-beta units that
were built without power management implemented. RIM is on track with its
schedule to optimize the BlackBerry PlayBook's battery life and looks forward
to providing customers with a professional grade tablet that offers superior
performance with comparable battery life."
RIM
introduced the PlayBook at its annual DevCon
conference in September. Featuring a 7-inch display, running an OS based on QNX
technology, and offering WiFi and 3G connectivity via a BlackBerry smartphone,
RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis called it the industry's first enterprise-ready
tablet. And while its enterprise bent does set it apart a bit in the
increasingly crowded tablet market, the PlayBooks main competitor will nonetheless
be the Apple iPad, the holder more than 90 percent of the worlds tablet market
share.
While some iPad testers run hotter and cooler than
others, a feature that few quibble with is its super-duper battery life. The Wall
Street Journal's Walt Mossberg, testing the iPad for the paper, found the iPad's
battery to actually outlast even Apples estimate for it by
more than an hour.
In his research note, Wu additionally told investors
that his firm expects RIM to sell approximately 700,000 PlayBooks in 2011,
despite other published estimates coming in between 1 million and 8 million
units.
As we have said before, wrote Wu, we are not
convinced that tablets outside of the iPad will see high volume success.
In
a Dec. 29 report, DisplaySearch analyst Richard Shim
described the iPad's success as owing to the combination of its strong hardware,
operating system and vast application ecosystem adding that Apple hardly
started from square one with the iPad, as Apple CEO Steve Jobs has also said,
in so many words, but with the iPad leverages the successes of the iPhone.
"We believe that the main competitors to the iPad,"
wrote Shim, "will be the ones investing in a unique experience."
Email
Print
