RIMM Blackberry Playbook launch…some initial impressions…the “S” word

There’s been quite a lot of bashing of the product, some slightly hilarious, if they were not so damaging.  There might even be a bit of over-patriotic/love for another company, that has coloured some of the reviews.

Segmentation…this market is so big, I think that one needs to look at the segments. there’s quite an apt cartoon on the smartphone segmentation

I suspect that RIMM is not going for the same segment as the Apple iPad. I would be surprised if people really thought that RIMM expected to knock Apple off #1 in their home segment.

I can’t help feeling that rather a lot of the reviews have been trying to evaluate the Playbook as if it were intended to be something else.

There are about 60M Blackberry users, who probably would define quite a nice set of starting segments to sell into, so the “tethered” aspect may be a virtue in that market, not a deficit.

I think that it will be very interesting to hear how existing Blackberry users find it, when using it the way that it was intended.

However a side point I would add, is that Blackberry owners may well delay purchase due to some of the (slightly partisan on occasions!) reviews in the financial press.

INTERESTS: I do hold the RIMM stock, which I purchased with the profits from my Apple stocks, that did pretty well thanks to their phones and tablets, thank you!  I am not employed by any PR co etc etc.