Nationwide Launch of the BlackBerry PlayBook

Today is the day you can pop down to the shops to buy BlackBerry's first Tablet. The tablet will be made available to customers in Spain, Germany, Australia, and several other countries within the next 30 days. Previous to this, the BlackBerry PlayBook has only been available only in the U.S. and Canada.


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Media

The media campaign for this has been huge and has included press ads through retailers such as Carphone Warehouse, DSG and Phones 4U in a mix of national press titles including the Sun, Metro, Guardian, Independent, Times and Telegraph. There is also a cover wrap around the IMAX cinema in Waterloo (at a 2 week cost of £180K) and inside Euston Station. BlackBerry have also gone online with a facebook sponsored story.



IMAX cover wrap:
photo taken this morning

Focus and Specs

Unlike much of its competition, BlackBerry's tablet focuses on enterprise customers first. The tablet boasts a 7-inch display and runs the company's new tablet operating system. It includes dual 1080p HD cameras for video conferencing and capture, and runs on a 1GHz dual-core processor. The tablet comes in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB storage options, ranging in price from £399 to £559.

 

BlackBerry Bridge

The PlayBook lets you wirelessly connect to your BlackBerry smartphone for real time access to: Email, calendar, address book, task list and BBM.

True multi-tasking
The superfast dual-core processor allows multiple applications to run simultaneously. Switch back and forth quickly and easily between HD media, gaming and email.

Limitless browsing
The internet the way it’s supposed to be. Browse all of your favourite sites wherever you are. Full Flash 10.1 capability and built in HTML 5 support is ideal for games, media, apps and everything the real internet offers.

Review
The PlayBook has already featured in a number of tech reviews - T3 gave it 3/5 stars in July's issue and The Daily Telegraph declares that "BlackBerry is still ripening". Here are some highlights from today's review:
 
Benefits

• At 7” the PlayBook is more portable than the best rival tablets (all of which are around 10”).
• As well built as iPad or Samsung Galaxy Tab and its screen is bright and sharp.
• High quality accessories available like the Ettinger wallet.

Drawbacks

• It is difficult to get used to the swipe action to take you from one menu to another.
• You cannot tether your email to it unless you have a BlackBerry phone. Without one you have to access email via the web. BlackBerry are working on remedying this.
• Not enough apps for the PlayBook (yet) although the apps that it does have are impressive, e.g. corporate apps like RBS.

Conclusion
So the PlayBook is in some ways a lovely device, whose fine hardware is wasted on today’s software. If you’re a BlackBerry aficionado, it is a product you may well want to buy, although you should probably wait until later this year when the problems have been fixed (and BlackBerry plans to launch two 4G models later this year).

BlackBerry had better hope the world doesn’t pass it by.

However, Online Gossip (marketing gossip for small businesses) review brings up an issue that the Telegraph hadn't thought of - the name of the tablet: "Can you really see a serious businessman standing on the platform at Euston station telling someone they are using their Playbook, big error I think."

Sources

Daily Telegraph Technology Section (16.06.11)

Times (16.06.11)
Online Gossip.co.uk