Sprint Decides to Pass on 4G PlayBook, RIM Shifts Focus to LTE

From DailyTech: Citing a lack of demand, Sprint has decided to shelve plans for a 4G/WiMAX version of RIM's 7" PlayBook tablet reports the Wall Street Journal. More importantly, despite the fact that the BlackBerry smartphones were once the darlings of business users, the new PlayBook has failed to find an audience with corporate users.

“It’s an interesting concept, it just hasn’t caught on with business customers as much as they would like,” said Paget Alves who heads Sprint’s business markets group. “There are so many tablets in the market, it creates confusion for the average customer.”

RIM has also failed to gain support for its PlayBook from the two biggest U.S. carriers -- AT&T and Verizon Wireless.

For RIM's part, it's taking the Sprint announcement in stride, and has fired back by stating that it is throwing its full support behind an LTE version of the PlayBook:

RIM has decided to prioritize and focus its 4G development resources on LTE. We remain excited and committed to delivering innovative and powerful 4G tablets to the US market together with our carrier partners. Testing of BlackBerry 4G PlayBook models is already underway and we plan to enter labs for network certifications in the US and other international markets this fall.

RIM shipped 500,000 PlayBooks in its most recent quarter, while Motorola's Xoom -- which has widely been considered a flop -- managed deliveries of just 440,000. By contrast, Apple sold 9.25 million iPads during its most recent quarter and is just now starting to catch up with demand.

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