For the PlayBook to work, you’ll need another BlackBerry

Alright, so some of the top tier blogs in the US have already gotten their hands on the BlackBerry PlayBook and while most — who like us — are genuinely impressed with native browser capabilities of the device in addition to its sleek form factor and built quality, many can’t quite comprehend the logic behind RIM’s decision to restrict important productive functionality like BBM, email and calender requiring users to tether the PlayBook to a BlackBerry phone. If you don’t, you’re stuck with checking your emails and calendar via web access.

Excerpt from Gizmodo:

The question is: Who, besides BlackBerry users, is going to want to buy it? The core email and calendar apps are completely tethered to a BlackBerry. Without your BlackBerry, there is no native email or calendar app—just access through the (admittedly good) web browser. But that’s gonna turn off a lot of people. And we didn’t get a chance to see what the new App World looks like, or any of the future apps that could make it a truly killer tablet—or break it.

The PlayBook could very well be the first BlackBerry device for potentially a lot of people out there, so why is RIM closing the door to a new market that is keen to experiment and discover what the PlayBook has to offer and perhaps warm up to the BlackBerry smart phones? Instead with this email and calendar limitation, owning a BlackBerry smartphone becomes a prerequisite to owning the PlayBook. Not a good start for a company that wants to make inroads into this new tablet market.

We don’t know about you but we like the flexibility of using a tablet device from one manufacturer and a smart phone from another. There are people out there who use BlackBerry phones and an iPad or even an Android tablet. As good as the PlayBook can be, there will be some of these BB users who don’t necessarily want a PlayBook. It’s silly for RIM to assume that they do.

And then there’s the big question of developer support for QNX — the operating system on the PlayBook. RIM has shown very little of this so far.

From Gizmodo again:

This form factor is totally going to live and die by the apps, by the that things you can do with it. RIM’s smartly giving developers a lot of way into the PlayBook—Adobe AIR, HTML5/web apps (which they call WebWorks), a native SDK (only for special developers), and they can —but how many are going to bite?

So the PlayBook could very well be damn good browser and not much else.

What do you think?

Head on after the jump for a first look video from Endgadget.

[picture credit]