Research in Motion announced Wednesday that it will delay the launch of its BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 until February 2012.
"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," David J. Smith, senior vice president for BlackBerry PlayBook, said in a blog post.
As a first step, RIM said it will push the inclusion of a native BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) app to a subsequent PlayBook OS release.
"We are committed to developing a seamless BBM solution that fully delivers on the powerful, push based messaging capabilities recognized today by BlackBerry users around the world and we're still working on it," RIM said.
For now, BlackBerry smartphone users can use BlackBerry Bridge to use BBM on the PlayBook.
For developers, RIM said it will provide them with the gold release of the PlayBook native SDK and a PlayBook OS 2.0 beta.
"The developer beta allows developers to begin porting their native apps to the PlayBook platform. In the following months, the developer kit will be updated with the full Cascades animation and UI engine that was first demonstrated at BlackBerry DevCon," Smith wrote. "We expect that the developer beta will generate thousands of new applications for BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0."
Select enterprise customers, meanwhile, will be able to try out a closed beta of PlayBook OS 2.0 in the coming months.
What does OS 2.0 include? Smith said the 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."
The PlayBook has had a tough time competing against the iPad and Android-based tablets. The company shipped half a million PlayBooks in the first quarter the tablet was available, but that number fell to just 200,000 units shipped in RIM's fiscal second quarter ending August 27. There were price cuts and rumors that RIM was ditching the tablet market altogether, but RIM said that was "pure fiction" and that it remains "highly committed to the tablet market."
At DevCon, meanwhile, RIM unveiled BBX, an OS that features HTML 5 support, robust security, and a commitment to open standards. It combines the company's RIM BlackBerry 7 OS and the QNX OS from the PlayBook. Going forward, BBX will be the OS of choice on RIM's smartphones, mobile devices, and embedded systems. But it is also facing a legal challenge from a New Mexico company that claims it owns the rights to the BBX name.
RIM also suffered through a massive, three-day BlackBerry outage this month, which the company said was the worst in its history.