Troubled technology giant, Research In Motion, is facing new difficulties as the company announces the delay of a needed software update for the Blackberry PlayBook tablet computer until February. The company has had several recent issues with product delays and outages that have outraged customers and this latest delay is not helping the company’s reputation. Technology Business Research senior analyst Ken Hyers said, “Delays are probably the biggest issue that RIM is facing. The risk is that it will become irrelevant.”
The delay of the software update was announced in a blog post by David J. Smith, RIM’s senior vice president for the PlayBook division. Mr. Smith wrote, “As much as we’d love to have it in your hands today, we’ve made the difficult decision to wait to launch BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 until we are confident we have fully met the expectations of our developers, enterprise customers and end-users.”
The reason for the update to the PlayBook’s operating system software is the correction of several vexing issues, including the inability to send or receive e-mail without being linked to a BlackBerry phone. RIM’s co-chief executives, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, have suggested that the release of the software update is imminent, and an incomplete, early version of the software was released to developers in October.
Analysts expect that the delay of the software upgrade will ruin the company’s chances of significant PlayBook sales as consumers put off buying the tablet until after the software upgrade has been completed. Analysts are also concerned about the possibility of a delay in the release of a new line of BlackBerry phones that utilize the same operating system. The PlayBook tablet and the smartphones share an operating system created by QNX Software Systems, a company acquired by RIM in 2010, and it is believed the PlayBook delay is a signal that the phones will appear later than anticipated.