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BlackBerry PlayBook will not be upgraded to BlackBerry 10

BlackBerry PlayBook will not be upgraded to BlackBerry 10

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Blackberry PlayBook
Blackberry PlayBook

Reneging on a promise made in January, BlackBerry has just announced that it will not, in fact, be upgrading the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet to its latest mobile OS, BlackBerry 10. CEO Thorsten Heins revealed the sour news on the company's investor call relating to today's earnings report, though he didn't delve into the specifics of why the company's plans have changed. The only justification offered by Heins is that BlackBerry was unable to get performance up to a satisfactory level, and the company now intends to focus on core products instead.

BlackBerry's chief recently bemoaned the lack of a good business model for tablets and even went so far as to suggest that they'll be gone from the market within the next five years. It's therefore quite consistent with his outlook to consider the PlayBook a peripheral product that isn't core to BlackBerry's future prosperity. All the same, there'll be quite a few PlayBook owners who'll feel their trust has been betrayed by this reversal.