Is the BlackBerry Playbook competitive enough?

February 22, 2011
Windows Phone and Nokia
Network World
Kerrie Meyler provides some insight into the Nokia and Microsoft partnership.

“The big news over the past week has been the Microsoft-Nokia partnership, where Nokia will adopt Windows Phone as its primary smartphone strategy. The news has had a mixed reaction, as the value of Nokia’s shares fell 14 per cent the day of the announcement. That however, was before news came out regarding the billion+ dollar investment and incentives going to Nokia as part of the agreement. Why did Nokia go with Microsoft? According to the Wall Street Journal February 18, Google was also courting Nokia, but Microsoft offered them considerably more money and other incentives. It came down to who was the highest bidder. And an alliance – albeit with Microsoft or Google – also means Nokia doesn’t need to develop its own smartphone technology.”

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Is the BlackBerry PlayBook competitive enough?
ZD Net
Zack Whittaker writes about RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and its potential for positioning in the market.

“The price tag for the benchmark of all tablets was clearly set by the entry level Apple iPad at $499. But this set a problem for competitors and their own devices: either to have a smaller feature set and lower the price to level out as compensation for a seemingly lower powered device, or to apply a cheaper operating system like Android and maintain a similar build quality of the iPad, but with less of a marketing buzz. Either way, the iPad is a tough cookie to crack, and so far every other competitor has pretty much bombed.The PlayBook, however, holds the same price tag of $499 as the iPad – maybe more, maybe less, as it is still early days yet. But already this bodes well for any iPad competition by appearing to be of the same value and worth as the iPad.”

Tablet owners migrating PC tasks to the slate
ZD Net
James Kendrick shares findings from NPD Group which looks at which business functions are being used on tablets instead of PCs.

“A survey conducted by the NPD Group of 2,400 consumers shows a marked decrease in usage of the PC in favour of the tablet. The three tasks that respondents find to be better suited for the tablet are e-mail, social networking and Web browsing. These tasks also fit the smartphone well, but owners are not as satisfied with using the phone as they are the tablet. The survey didn’t specify which tablets are being used for these activities, but logic dictates the majority are using the iPad due to numbers of the Apple tablet that have been sold to date. Survey respondents claimed that 30 per cent of tablet owners are using the PC less for e-mail and Web browsing, while 28 per cent of them prefer the slate for social networking. While 35 per cent of smartphone owners report using that device for more email than the PC, the smaller display leads to much less phone usage for Web browsing and social networking than PC.”

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Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

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Maxine Cheung
Maxine Cheung
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