RIM vows to keep developing Flash for BlackBerry PlayBook – no joke

November 10, 2011 By Jeffrey Van Camp

RIM has decided to continue developing Flash for its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet despite Adobe publicly abandoning its own product for HTML5. Should RIM be dedicating its resources to this when there are so many other issues with the PlayBook?

Since the Steve Jobs biography came out, we’ve heard a lot about his “reality distortion field,” or how he would make crazy things happen by getting everyone to believe it. RIM may have a reality distortion field of its own right now, but it’s not a good one. Despite Adobe vocally dropping support for Flash mobile and crowning HTML5 a victor over its own product, RIM is determined to keep developing Flash for its BlackBerry PlayBook.

“As an Adobe source code licensee, we will continue to work on and release our own implementations. RIM remains committed to delivering an uncompromised Web browsing experience to our customers, including native support for Adobe Flash Player on our BlackBerry PlayBook tablet (similar to a desktop PC browser), as well as HTML5 support on both our BlackBerry smartphone and PlayBook browsers,” RIM told AllThingsD. “In fact, we are pleased that Adobe will focus more efforts on the opportunities that HTML5 presents for our developers, and shares our commitment to HTML5 as we discussed together at DevCon Americas.”

While we don’t necessarily want RIM to just drop support for Flash out of nowhere, its commitment to continuing to spend its own money developing a product that Adobe itself is abandoning seems, well, somewhat odd. Also, RIM still has not delivered on any of the promises it made on the BlackBerry PlayBook when it launched in April. There is still no Android app support, no native email client, and no native calendar, among other things that were promised for Summer 2011. Many apps, like its podcasting app, remain somewhat useless as well. A new Staples app shows the PlayBook at a discounted $200 price point, but even at that price, we would probably recommend somebody pick up an Amazon Kindle Fire or Nook Tablet or a $300 tablet. The PlayBook’s app library just isn’t there and we’re beginning to doubt that things will get better for the struggling tablet. We love the intuitiveness of the BlackBerry Tablet OS, but RIM has a lot of issues to fix if it hopes to move forward.

What do you think? Do you have a PlayBook and love it? Should RIM dedicate its own resources to keeping a dying platform running on its dying tablet?

Showing 6 comments

axe at 2:11pm 10th November 2011 Adobe said that they will continue to support existing implementations of flash on android and playbook for bug fixes and security updates...I think you got the article wrong / mixed up there. RIM works on the OS, and Adobe does flash - that won't change. (Agreed that Flash is deep into the OS).Also - RIM at Devcon went very heavily into native tools and HTML 5 - not flash, so again, you seem to be misleading your readers.As a final thought, the appverse of the Playbook has improved greatly in the past weeks, and while there are not 30000 variations of the same application, there are some real interesting, useful applications and some pretty amazing games. The continued recycling of "no-email" "no-calendar" gets a little tiring after a while...I've got a playbook and I know several more that do as well...none of us complain about what others see as a missing feature. In fact, the calendar and email on my Playbook work quite well...Finally, for the record, at Devcon they also released a developer beta of 2.0 which includes the android player. While it is a beta release, it shows real progress being made. Recommending a kindle fire over a playbook is laughable. (The Kindle fire is more of an amazon extension running a crippled version of android rather than a full fledged OS like the Playbook or Samsung Tab.
1. Jeffrey Van Camp at 3:51pm 10th November 2011 The Kindle Fire may be a modified version of Android with some restrictions, but I'd wager that at launch it might be more capable and have more useful apps and services than the PlayBook has having launched back in April. I own a PlayBook and like the interface, but RIM has not delivered on its promises. Since I do not own a BlackBerry phone, I also do not get email on the device, which is a useful feature that has led me to use other tablets over the PlayBook.I'd love to see the Android player come about, but I still do not understand what the hold up has been.I will go check the AppWorld to see if it has gained a lot of support in the week or two since I've checked, but it's not so much about having 30,000 of the same apps, it's about having the big apps that people like to use on the platform. Microsoft has worked hard and gotten Windows Phone to the point where it has a lot of the top apps. Aside from the custom Facebook app, I haven't seen that kind of effort from RIM.If you want to go back and read my review of the PlayBook, I was quite optimistic about the device. But it has become clear that RIM launched too early and didn't have a clear plan for delivering on its promises.
  1. joebranko at 3:06pm 11th November 2011 Will it be possible for RIM to add email to Playbooks already purchased? ie do you think it will it be a software upgrade that is downloadable?
    Jeffrey Van Camp at 4:07pm 11th November 2011 It's entirely possible. The only problem is that RIM doesn't seem to want to. The company has tight business-driven security policies and checking email on a tablet doesn't seem to meet that criteria. At least that was the initial reason given. However, the company claimed solutions were in the works, but nothing has happened. A system update with new software or an app in the AppWorld app store could add email. RIM just hasn't done it yet.
    joebranko at 5:00pm 12th November 2011 Thanks for this. I like RIM and the Blackberry. I think I will wait a few months before committing. Thanks again.
jesterking at 9:18am 10th November 2011 Oh great! The future of Flash is now in RIMS hands... So it is as good as dead...