BlackBerry (née RIM) has had a tough time in the tablet market to date, but according to the company's CEO, that doesn't matter because the market itself is doomed.
"In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore," CEO Thorsten Heins said in an interview Monday at the Milken Institute, according to Bloomberg. "Maybe a big screen in your workspace, but not a tablet as such. Tablets themselves are not a good business model."
That certainly sounds like a bold prediction considering that competitors like Apple sold nearly 20 million tablets last quarter and reports suggest that overall tablet shipments will outpace desktop shipments this year. Of course, BlackBerry has had a very different experience in the market: The company released the BlackBerry Playbook tablet in 2011 missing some key features like email, and sales limped along until it slashed the price of the device. BlackBerry shipped 370,000 Playbook tablets in the March quarter.
Heins and BlackBerry still appear to be weighing whether it makes sense to release a follow-up to the BlackBerry Playbook tablet. At the January launch event for BB10, Heins told reporters that the company will only release another tablet if it can "provide a value proposition that is not just hardware, but software, too."
Do you think Heins is right about the tablet market? Share in the comments.
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