Electronista reports that the next major player in the tablet wars, RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook, just hit a wall. According to Shaw Wu, an analyst from investment banking and advisory firm Kaufman Bros., sources told him that the PlayBook "allegedly has battery life of just 'a few hours'" – far less than the Samsung Galaxy Tab's 6 and the Apple iPad's 10.
Wu said that re-engineering the device could be a possibility and that a bigger battery could solve the problem. The problem is, a bigger battery will make the unit heavier and thus, less useable. Remember, the PlayBook is a 7-incher and is meant to be more portable than the iPad – a fact that Apple CEO Steve Jobs bonks at.
Unfortunately, the problems continue to domino from there. Wu predicts that the original forecast of 8 million PlayBook units will fall to 700,000 (nope, we didn't miss a zero) given that the potential operating system, QNX, wasn't designed for mobile devices and that there are "simply not enough apps and users" in the BlackBerry App World to help generate money. Ouch.
Okay, so it seems that RIM's 1st-generation tablet hit a snag, but hey, let's not forget that even the mighty iPad had its share of problems. There's still a couple of months to fix the problem, so until then, we really can't judge the PlayBook by its cover.
Via Gottabemobile
Source Electronista
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