With Playbook launch round the corner, all eyes have now been shifted to the Research in Motion (RIM) which is under pressure from the rise of iPhone and Android phones.
“I don’t fully understand why there’s this negative sentiment, and I just don’t have the time to battle it. Because in the end, what I’ve learned is you’ve just got to prove it over and over and over,” RIM co-chief executive officer Mike Lazaridis has said while talking to the New York Times.
Dismissing the theories that RIM is under pressure, he said that the company has presence in 170 countries with 500 carriers, and is growing consistently, but that people don’t appreciate it.
RIM is going to launch its PlayBook tablet on April 19.
Balsillie agreed that it would have been better if RIM had moved faster to produce a tablet. But he also notes that the transition process is extremely tough and most companies do not manage to get it right and die in the process.
The PlayBook comes with a dual core Processor which means it can run several applications at the same time, and it can play Flash videos at good Resolution (even on bigger screens). The problem is, PlayBook doesn’t have many applications which users can run, so they won’t have much option to use this facility.
RIM still has a strong base of customers as it has access to governments and big businesses, who buy this device for its high security data network.
With PlayBook, RIM has taken a big step outside its comfort zone. It runs Flash and Adobe AIR over the QNX platform. The earlier BlackBerry handsets used to run Java-based platforms only.
RIM has also been wooing developers for some time but we don’t yet know how successful the company has been in its endeavour.