What do you not want to do if you are RIM? That's right, release a bunch of faulty PlayBooks. Call me cynical but I really don't fancy the Playbook’s chances in the tough tablet market. Is it because Steve wrote off the 7inch tablet as DOA? No, I think he's wrong there; there's certainly some sort of a market for 7inchers, just perhaps not a huge one. For me the two main problems are timing, and purpose.
Timing wise, the iPad still seems untouchable, even the Queen wants one, and RIM, they seem, useless quite frankly. Their new range of smartphones might pull their reputation and sales figures back up with a sneaky advertisement campaign on Spotify aimed at the cool kids, but that remains to be seen.
In terms of the Playbooks purpose, it's marketed as a web browsing tablet. Fair enough, but is that enough? Won't must people be happy to browse the web on their smartphones? The iPad has taking the industry by storm because it's innovative and multi-functional not just an expensive web browser.
Back to the point in hand, 1000 PlayBook tablets, were shipped with faulty operating systems that might have prevented users from performing the initial setup of the device. The devices have been recalled and RIM released a statement saying: "We are working to replace the affected devices." “In the small number of cases where a customer received a PlayBook that is unable to properly load software upon initial set-up, they can contact RIM for assistance.”
1000 is a relatively small number of affected products but it's much more of a PR disaster than anything else, hence the long introductory rant. And this is no RIM hating, I actually like BlackBerry a lot, I just wish it would sort it's sh** out. At the moment their image and their profits/shares are at an all time low.