While BlackBerry maker Research in Motion isn’t pointing the finger at Apple directly, a new report out of Taiwan suggests that the Canadian company’s new seven-inch PlayBook tablet was delayed a month due to shortages caused by Cupertino’s touch panel consumption.
AppleInsider is reporting that the iPad 2 may have indirectly caused a month’s delay for Research in Motion’s new BlackBerry PlayBook, a seven-inch tablet finally launching on April 19 at the entry price of $499 after being shown off in recent months to the tech media. According to Taiwan’s DigiTimes, the delay may have been caused by insufficient supply of the touch display panels necessary to manufacture the PlayBook -- since Apple is scarfing most of them up for its larger iPad 2.
PlayBook shipments appear to have been stalled for a month “due to a delay in software testing as well as shortage of touch panels because Apple already booked up most of the available capacity,” claims sources close to the touch panel makers.
If you’ve closely followed the saga of RIM’s entry to the tablet market, you may recall that the PlayBook was promised for the first quarter of 2011, during which time the BlackBerry maker announced several other configurations of the device, including a 4G model through Sprint which won’t debut until this summer.
While RIM executives have been boasting that the PlayBook easily bests competitors -- including the iPad 2 -- the company has been busy defending claims that short battery life were responsible for the delays, as well as their decision to include Google Android support on the device, in addition to a host of others, such as Adobe Flash and AIR.
We’ll find out soon enough if the BlackBerry PlayBook is a formidable opponent for the iPad 2 when it gets its day in the retail sun on April 19, wisely matching the iPad 2’s entry price at $499.
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