You may want to hold off on buying a tablet according to BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins. That's because there won't be a reason to own one in five years, the executive told Bloomberg during a recent interview. It's a noteworthy prediction considering tablets are expected to outship desktops this year and notebooks next year.
According to recent data from IDC, tablet shipments were up 78.4 percent during 2012, topping out at 128 million units. The firm expects manufacturers to ship 190 million devices worldwide this year. Even through 2017, the researcher believes there will still be growth in the tablet industry.
So what exactly can we gather from Heins' comments in the meantime? For one, it almost guarantees that we won't see a successor to the ill-fated BlackBerry PlayBook. The sole tablet from BlackBerry hit the market in 2011 with plenty of potential but the fact that it lacked a number of core apps like e-mail and messaging rendered it useless in the eyes of many. Numerous price cuts didn't help matters, either.
That's bad news for some BlackBerry faithful that would love to see the Canadian company try their hand at a proper tablet running BB10. But when the CEO believes it's a bad business to be in, it's simply not going to happen.
In the interim, there's little doubt that heavy hitters like Amazon, Apple, Google and Samsung will continue to dole out tablets to the masses in a variety of shapes and sizes.