Blackberry Playbook most underrated tablet on the market?

Now before we begin this article, you must know that I own a Playbook myself, however, I will try my hardest to produce factual comparisons, however there will also be opinions in there also.

Now, the Blackberry Playbook (as of December 2011) have sold 1,000,000 units of the Blackberry Playbook since its release date in April which is rather pathetic compared to the 15 million that the iPad 2 sold in Q4 of last year alone! According to Strategy Analytics figures in the 2011 second quarter, the PlayBook's market share is 3.3 percent, compared to iOS (iPad, iPad 2) by Apple with 61.3 percent, Android by Google with 30.1 percent, and various Windows by Microsoft with 4.6 percent

Okay, so now we've looked at the appalling figures of the sales, let's have a look at why I think it is one of the most underrated tablets to come out! Let's begin with the sepcifications, it has a 1280x600 resolution screen so it has a a higher PPI than the iPad and so the screen is clearer and videos and images appear to be nicer. Also, the cameras are 5 mp rear and 2mp front facing and both record in 1080p. As far as I know, this is still the highest front facing camera on any mobile device we have on the market, phones included. In addition, the Playbook is running a 1ghz dual-core processor, which at the time was fast but is not considered to be very high compared to some of the tablets of today. However, the device runs impeccably smoothly and just flies through tasks and never lags or slows down so there isn't really a need for a higher processor. IN ADDITION, the Playbook had the same processing power as the iPad 2 and could run games just as beautifully as the iPad 2, arguably more beautifully due to the higher resolution screen.

As I previously shortly mentioned, the Playbook runs really well as well, I'd understand the lack of sales if it wasn't a nice OS to work with and was complicated to use. But it's the opposite, it's simple and even slightly futuristic and you'd think it'd appeal to the lesser tech-minded audience due to the Playbook looking cool and funky when you use it.

When the Playbook came out, having apps on the iPad and iPhone was a massive reason to buy mobile devices and the Playbook had absolutely no decent apps excluding the ones that came with the device itself and Facebook! However, since then Gameloft and EA games have released some brilliantly beautiful and fun games into the Playbook's app world and there are other brilliant applications in the App world such as: Vevo, Nobex Radio, Blaq for Twitter, Evernote and plenty of other applications to keep you entertained.

Okay, so I've pointed out all of the Playbook's highlights now let's be more honest here, the reason that the Playbook wasn't popular was simply because it didn't have BBM and that is 80% of the reason that the general consumers buy Blackberrys these days. Also, it didn't have email, a calendar or contacts which is 80% of the reason that business consumers buy Blackberrys these days, for it's secure emailing capabilities.

I can imagine that a lot of people who wanted a BB were tech-minded enough to not have already bought a Blackberry mobile phone (due to there being far better Android options and the iPhone out) and so when people get told that they can only access email and bbm from their Blackberrys, they're repulsed by the idea of having to buy a Blackberry for those features, so they are turned away.

However, what I don't quite understand is that Blackberry are one of the biggest makers in the mobile market, so it was inevitable that they'd bring BBM and email to the device, in fact email (not yet BBM) is coming to the Playbook in February in the OS 2.0 update!

Thank you for reading and don't be afraid to voice your opinions in the comments about your opinion on the matter!