Research in Motion’s iPad competitor, the Blackberry Playbook, was back in the news this week for all the wrong reasons. And now the company is striking back, saying reports over the device’s poor battery life are false.
Just a couple days ago, Kaufman Bros analyst Shawn Wu dismissed the Playbook’s battery life, saying it lasted just “a few hours” before completely shutting down. That would put it way behind the iPad’s 10 hour battery life, and even worse than the Samsung Galaxy Pad.
As you might expect, RIM isn’t really happy with the way Wu’s comments spread around like wildfire. It’s not good for a product that isn’t even out to start getting bad press.
The Blackberry maker e-mailed a statement, according to Reuters, which said Wu’s claims should not be taken seriously because the device isn’t finished yet.
“Any testing or observation of battery life to date by anyone outside of RIM would have been performed using pre-beta units that were built without power management implemented,” the company said in the e-mail.
Sales outlooks are already poor for the Playbook, with a meager few million expected in its first year. That would put it far behind the iPad and Galaxy Tab, and would mean the Playbook wouldn’t really do anything to bring RIM back from the brink of irrelevance.
2010 has been a terrible year for Blackberry, with huge companies like JP Morgan Chase & Co cutting off their corporate Blackberry accounts and switching to iPhone/Android. RIM also launched a brand new Blackberry operating system, with a big media frenzy, but was met with low sales and reviews that were mediocre at best.
2011 will be a trying year, as RIM will either need to come back with a punch or it’ll fall even further into oblivion. [[BlackBerry]]
