Research In Motion has confirmed that a new version of its BlackBerry PlayBook operating system is "on track" for a February release, raising doubts about an allegation that the company was not being upfront about why it pushed back the release of new BlackBerry 10-based smartphones until the second half of 2012.
A post from Boy Genius Report published Thursday alleged that RIM co-CEO Mike Laziridis was "lying" when he said in an earnings call this month that the Canadian smartphone maker was waiting for an LTE chipset from a third-party vendor before greenlighting the release of next-generation BlackBerry 10 phones.
The tech blog cited an unnamed RIM employee as saying the real reason for the delay was that next-generation BlackBerry 10 software, which blends RIM's self-developed BlackBerry platform for smartphones with the QNX operating system it acquired in 2010 and which currently runs the PlayBook tablet, wasn't anywhere near ready for prime time and wouldn't be for months to come.
RIM denied the accusation, calling the BGR report "inaccurate and uninformed" and "simply false." Late Thursday, a RIM spokesperson told PCMag that "RIM confirmed last week during its earnings call that PlayBook OS 2.0 is on track for February 2012," in response to a direct question about the PlayBook upgrade schedule.
Now, with RIM reaffirming its pledge to roll out PlayBook OS 2.0 as scheduled in February, it appears the ball is in the BlackBerry maker's court to disprove its accuser's claim once and for all.
That's because the PlayBook OS upgrade is supposed to incorporate native email, BlackBerry Messenger, and other features that were missing on RIM's first consumer tablet when the company released it earlier this year—a major reason why the PlayBook has been panned by reviewers and avoided by consumers.
Keep in mind that the meat of the BGR source's accusation is that RIM is delaying BB10 for as long as a year because it hasn't been able to integrate BlackBerry OS features like native email into QNX, which forms the backbone of the BlackBerry 10 platform the company is developing for all of its future mobile devices.
So what's that all mean? Basically, if RIM rolls out an improved version of QNX (which it now calls PlayBook OS) in 60 days or less that has all of the promised functionality in place and working properly, it would go a long way towards showing that Laziridis really wasn't "lying" after all.