RIM plays up PlayBook tablet's enterprise credentials

RIM has shed more light on its tablet strategy and the thinking behind its BlackBerry PlayBook device, due to ship in the US in early 2011.

David Heit, RIM's director of product strategy, said in an interview with V3.co.uk that, rather than imitating Apple's iPad, the BlackBerry PlayBook had developed out of feedback from enterprise customers about the need for a more convenient way to access web applications and documents.

"For years, one of the things we have been asked about by customers is the browser. They told us they wanted the full web experience on the BlackBerry, but when they got it, they found the screen was too small to be satisfactory," he explained.

This has led to the concept of a device with a slightly bigger screen and longer battery life that fits somewhere between a laptop and a smartphone, a position that pits tablets against netbooks.

Heit said that netbooks stand to lose, because they are basically a miniature laptop and do not fit the new situations offered by tablets.

"For users who consume a lot of information, it's not about replacing paper [documents], but about replacing the PC, printer and the paper with an electronic version," he explained.

"So you can take a tablet into a meeting and lay it on the table to share a document, whereas with a laptop, when you open it up, you're putting up a firewall between you and everyone else in the room."