Research In Motion today provided an update on BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 (with advanced integrated email, calendar and contact apps, a new video store, and additional functionality). Having slipped from its original summer 2011 launch date to October, RIM now expects to deliver it to customers in February 2012. As RIM explains, “As much as we’d love to have it in your hands today, we’ve made the difficult decision to wait to launch BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 until we are confident we have fully met the expectations of our developers, enterprise customers and end-users.”
To accomplish this goal, RIM will not include its BBM application. While no reason was given, rumours suggest that RIM is still trying to implement BBM in such a way that it could work with one BBM ID across multiple devices. In the meantime, users will need to continue to use the BlackBerry Bridge to connect to their BlackBerry smartphone.
There was a spot of good news in the update though. RIM announced that the native SDK for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet as well as a beta of BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2 are now available to developers.
While the news may be disappointing, a delayed but solid BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 is a far better option than an early but buggy release.