RIM Delays Playbook OS 2.0, BBM Nowhere In Sight

BlackBerry maker RIM has delayed a software update to its PlayBook tablet till early in 2012, and pushed the arrival of native email on the tablet even further into the future.

The arrival of Playbook OS 2.0 has been put off till February 2012, according to a blog post, which also revealed that the new version will not contain the long-awaited BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) application, which would allow Playbook users to access BlackBerry email without hooking up to a BlackBerry phone.

Disappointing

David Smith, RIM’s PlayBook senior vice president, wrote in the blog that the decision was made because the company was not convinced that the update would meet the expectations of developers, enterprise customers and end-users.

He added that the beta release of the update, launched last week at the company’s developer conference, would be made available to developers, along with the gold release of the native software developers kit (SDK) for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. “The developer beta allows developers to begin porting their native apps to the PlayBook platform. In the following months, the developer kit will be updated with the full Cascades animation and UI engine that was first demonstrated at BlackBerry DevCon.”

RIM will also be starting a series of closed betas with select enterprise customers, as part of its Early Adopter Programme (EAP), rolled out over the course of this year. “The betas will be conducted within global enterprise environments and will test the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet solution from end-to-end within corporate IT infrastructures,” said Smith.