Research In Motion has delayed the release of the next version of its BlackBerry PlayBook operating system until next year. It also says its BlackBerry Messenger app won’t appear in that release, although the ‘BlackBerry Bridge’ smartphone-to-tablet service will continue to offer BBM access.
However, the company has started distributing a beta version of PlayBook OS v2.0 to developers - and plans a closed beta release to some enterprise customers later this year.
In a blog post, David J Smith - senior vice president for BlackBerry PlayBook at RIM - said “As much as we’d love to have it in your hands today, we’ve made the difficult decision to wait to launch BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 until we are confident we have fully met the expectations of our developers, enterprise customers and end-users. The software update will add advanced integrated email, calendar and contact apps, a new video store, as well as new functionality that will allow your BlackBerry smartphone and BlackBerry PlayBook to work together even better.”
RIM says it now expects to deliver the new BlackBerry PlayBook OS to customers in February 2012. The company recently announced plans to introduce a new OS for its smartphones and tablets, although no timescale was given for this.