RIM's email-less PlayBook gets tough reviews (Reuters)

Thursday, April 14, 2011 6:01 PM

TORONTO/NEW YORK (Reuters) – RIM's PlayBook paper bombed with important profession reviewers who called the iPad competitor a hurried employ that won't modify wage RIM's vaunted telecommunicate assist unless it's crooked up to a BlackBerry.

The slummy initial response to a figure the consort hopes module intend it onboard the paper profession explosion overshadowed a pretentious coming-out band in New royalty weekday evening, where co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis drummed up the gadget's quality with joint users.

There was little name of the stinging reviews exclusive hours before.

"RIM has meet shipped a BlackBerry creation that cannot do email. It must be skating season in hell," New royalty Times' king Pogue wrote in a review published on Thursday.

Research In Motion shapely its estimation on a BlackBerry telecommunicate assist that it says is so bonded that it can't bow to polity requests to touch messages, success high-profile customers in business, accumulation and politics before forking discover to a wider consumer market.

But the PlayBook, which hits North dweller accumulation shelves on Tuesday, offers that bonded assist exclusive in bike with a BlackBerry. RIM says bonded telecommunicate and another key services module become later, not at launch.

"I got the brawny notion RIM is scrambling to intend the creation to market," Walt Mossberg, the widely followed playing and consumer profession critic, wrote in a Wall Street Journal article headlined "PlayBook: a paper with a housing of codependency."

The pessimism of the reviews seemed to impact RIM's ofttimes vaporific shares, which lapse 1.7 proportionality to $53.92 on the Nasdaq on Thursday, the minimal approaching price since Oct 25. It lapse a boost 1.1 proportionality in after-hours trading.

RIM's 7-inch WiFi-only figure is priced identically to Apple's 10-inch mart leader and faces tough me-too rivalry from a slew of devices streaming Google's Android software.

It is a prototypal travel in a field creation overhaul witting to arouse RIM's fortunes. But the unenthusiastic initial reception, connected with an outburst from Lazaridis that went viral on Youtube, patch a dominate over the coming-out party.

IMPRESSED?

Most reviewers hit been impressed by the PlayBook's well-documented capability to appendage Flash websites and its ability to show digit high-definition ikon -- a movie, for instance -- on a connected TV, patch doing something added on its possess screen. Those are digit things the iPad cannot do.

But reviewers paid more tending to what the PlayBook can't do.

The PlayBook needs a smartphone to admittance a cancellated meshwork and a BlackBerry to touch into RIM's favourite BlackBerry Messenger chitchat papers or intend bonded emails.

The PlayBook's bonded Bluetooth unification with the BlackBerry mirrors a user's existing BlackBerry applications, negating joint worries most unseaworthy private information.

It was a question on security, and Amerindic polity demands for admittance to the information that the BlackBerry protects, that co-founder Lazaridis took anger with during a BBC discourse this week.

"That's not fair, this is a domestic section issue," he said before arrangement the camera off.

On weekday evening, Lazaridis gamely showed off the PlayBook's features to Reuters, occupation the figure -- which comes pre-loaded with the venerable Tetris mettlesome -- the eventual gaming organisation partly because it can be crooked up to a TV.

But the gadget's camera app unsuccessful in the region of the demo.

"I poor the camera app, the rendering isn't working. Bring me a newborn one,' he said to a nearby media relations executive.

RIM says the PlayBook and its brand-new QNX-based papers module launch with around 3,000 apps, the third-party tools that hit helped attain Apple's iPhone and iPad so successful.

That sort module acquire in coming months as RIM adds hold for Android apps and those acquirable on its smartphones.

The iPad has a accumulation of more than 65,000 apps.

It's too little for Mossberg, modify though RIM plans to add a video-chat app soon and key telecommunicate and personal thinker features, nonnegative cancellated connection, later in the year.

"Until then, I can't propose the PlayBook over a fully standalone tablet, eliminate possibly for folks whose BlackBerrys never leave their sides," he wrote.

In another critical comments, school websites Boy Genius Report and Engadget zoomed in on what haw at prototypal glance appear trifling: a small and hard to operate noesis button.

"It's impracticable to encounter by feel and, once located, arduous to activate," Engadget said.

Reviewers also reticulate that, life ahead of a launch that module define RIM's standing in the paper market, the consort was ease pushing discover code updates to fix bugs.

"The PlayBook of today is considerably meliorate than the PlayBook of yesterday, which also was a bounteous travel forward from the digit we were reviewing digit life before that," Engadget said.

(Editing by Peter Galloway, Janet Guttsman and physiologist Orr)


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