Certain Habits

Today Blackberry pre-announced their iPad competitor, the PlayBook. The 7-inch tablet looks slick, with a user-interface similar to IOS4 and Palm’s WebOS.

Their positioning is crystal clear: “the tablet for the enterprise.” Of course, the iPad is on its way to being a tablet for the enterprise. But for those who think that business requires serious, consumer-unfriendly tools (IT departments, that’s you), Blackberry’s positioning is just the ticket. No doubt there’s some acronym-laden maintenance procedure that IT folks will start to require now that it will ship on the PlayBook.

The coverage on the NYT’s Gadgetwise blog made two interesting observations about the killer feature of the PlayBook: tethering it to an existing Blackberry to get an Internet connection.

First, Research in Motion’s “priority” seems to be keeping current Blackberry users loyal. But few people are likely to rush to buy a Blackberry so they can tether it to their new PlayBook. If Research in Motion is just playing defense, they’re going to get rolled.

Second, because the PlayBook doesn’t connect directly to cellular data plans, it seems unlikely that cell phone makers will promote the PlayBook. Given that cell makers are Research in Motion’s only distribution channel, what is the go to market strategy for the “PlayBook”?

We’ll see how Research in Motion answers those questions next year, when PlayBook actually launches. Until then, it’s a useful reminder how much a large installed base and well-defined channels can distort corporate strategy when new competitors emerge. Geoffrey Moore wouldn’t be surprised at all.