The BlackBerry Playbook
Research in Motion (RIM) said it will put off the launch of BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 until February 2012 and will not include BBM in the upgraded tablet OS.
According to RIM, it has delayed the update until it is confident it has “fully met the expectations of our developers, enterprise customers and end users.”
The update will include integrated email, calendar and contact apps, along with a new video store.
It will also postpone the inclusion of instant messaging service BBM to the BlackBerry Playbook, as the company is still working on it. It noted that BlackBerry smartphone users will still be able to use BlackBerry Bridge to securely access BBM on the PlayBook tablet.
The news won’t do much to spur PlayBook sales on this side of Christmas. RIM sold 200,000 PlayBook tablets last quarter, falling below analysts’ expectations.
However, developers can now access the gold release of the SDK for the BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0, letting them port their apps to the PlayBook platform. The beta of this OS was available to developers last week.
