BlackBerry PlayBook First Tablet To Gain NIST Approval 132
An anonymous reader writes "Despite its current struggles to win over consumers, RIM has always been strong in the enterprise. The company remained steadfast in its support for corporate environments with the launch of the PlayBook, calling it the only business-grade tablet. The NIST is now ready to back that claim, giving the BlackBerry PlayBook its stamp of approval — meaning it's now the lone tablet that is certified for use in U.S. government agencies."
I still don't think people are getting it (Score:3, Interesting)
The last time we had a RIM/Blackberry discussion, I went on about what is good about RIM/Blackberry and what they are doing right. Suffice to say, they are all about business and getting things done.
In contrast, all the other things in the smartphone movement are about fun distractions and what new, innovative and original thing can be done next... oh yeah, and getting sued or suing over it. With tablets, the firs thing in most people's mind was "what do I need this for?" and the most common criticism was "this is just a bigger phone!" And almost ALL of this focuses attention on the client side of things.
RIM/Blackberry's idea is that the phone is one of two parts of the whole. The other part is the server side. It is the server side which integrates the client device with the business stuff. If you're not integrating with your business, whatever that is, you're not getting what you need where business is concerned.
iDevice and Android use the opposite approach where the client side is the only thing. This approach is fine for Apple, because Apple wants a piece of everything the users does or experiences. This approach is fine for Google because they are getting what they want from the user as well. But neither of things things care much about what business wants,
But the majority of people here will continue to chant "RIM/Blackberry is letting the world pass them by! They are dying and they don't even know it!" I just can't subscribe to that point of view. There no question that there is a huge market for consumer oriented devices which includes iThings and Androids and that market is booming (and will have an expected bust eventually).
But that's not the market RIM/Blackberry lives in. They live in business and government markets where the requirements are different and among these are reliability, predictability, stability, workability and a lot of things that utterly bore the consumer public. The consumer public is a collection if solitary individuals and they only need to work (or play) the way they want to and they crave different things and new things all of the time. Government and business are entities comprised of teams of people who need to be able to do things in concert with each other. Enabling that need over handheld mobile devices is a tremendous challenge that they have mostly been able to meet and continue to meet.
It's not hard to imagine what you would be able to do with a tablet over a phone where Blackberry is concerned. The ability of a tablet to deliver and interact with information is quite obvious and that's what Blackberry is for. And for many business people, it can easily replace their luggable laptops. What is harder to imagine is how tablets benefit consumers. For most, it is a new shiny thing to play with and they will realize before too long that they don't need to be burdened with the size/weight/fragility of the tablet devices when comparing that against the benefits they get from their use. (A consumer's ROI analysis.)
It's nice to say that the RIM tablet is the first tablet to gain NIST approval, but I suspect it will be the only tablet to gain NIST approval unless Apple or an Android maker gets into making business integration servers which integrate the handhelds with the enterprise which is hard to imagine. Apple has repeatedly demonstrated that they don't want to do business or government -- it's too heavy of a responsibility for them. Android makers are more beholden to the carriers than the consumer or any business. It is just unimaginable for the tide to change in that regard.