Free BlackBerry PlayBook Offer for Developers – Did RIM Keep Its Word?

By k | April 10th, 2011 | 7 Comments »
Free BlackBerry PlayBook Offer for Developers – Did RIM Keep Its Word?


BlackBerryInsight wanted to find out from developers whether they participated in the free PlayBook offer by RIM and what their experience was. Overall, 595 developers that are on BlackBerry App World participated in this survey.

These are the questions we asked as well as the results:

Question 1


Question 2

Question 3

The few ones that stated they received their PlayBook already, I would not consider. The overall message here is: no developer who participated has received their PlayBook yet. So RIM, I guess they will still get it before the official launch on April 19th, right? :)

Note: We would like to apologize to all developers who felt offended by our survey. It was supposed to give you a better overview on how everyone else is doing and feeling about the free PlayBook offer.

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  • Anonymous

    They never promised it would be received before the launch. I just feel like I’m missing something here; over in the BB dev forums, every day people are reporting that they’re receiving approvals/confirmations for the free playbook offer (and people reporting in there will be just a subset of those who submitted.)

    I just feel like I’m missing something here — such as the point of the article, considering that most folks aren’t expecting to receive it pre-retail release. (Unless you’re considering RIM stating in a tweet once that developer units are getting shipped “as a priority” — which doesn’t actually say much at all.)

  • JW

    This stupid poll is like asking:

    Did you hear about Iron Man 3?
    Are you planning to see Iron Man 3?
    Did you see Iron Man 3 yet?

    You’d get similar results simply because Iron Man 3 is not out yet. Of course everyone said “no” to this poll, because no one is expecting it until the 19th or later! RIM said they would ship the devices once it was released commercially.

  • http://jrab.co J. Rab

    this poll is utterly ridiculous. they knowingly solicited emails from App World and spammed the accounts of several vendors. Hopefully no one takes this seriously. And yes I’m a developer for the PlayBook.

    For the record, RIM has kept their word thus far and this “poll” is premature and they are looking for publicity — just plain sad. Don’t fall for it.

  • k

    I heard the whole idea was that developers have the PlayBooks before the actual launch. Developing applications only for simulators is just not how the world works. Everything needs to be tested in real life before going online.

  • Anonymous

    It was only ever done in the context of “make an app and we’ll send a playbook”; the terms actually called out that they wouldn’t be available to us (devs) before the launch date — though of course we do/did *hope* otherwise ;)

  • k

    Honestly, I heard otherwise — officially. Not published on the website though, but outspoken at developer conferences and other occasions. So I took that for granted :)

  • k

    I think those were valid questions based on the assumption that developers were supposed to get devices before the official launch. I am pretty sure about that, but it seems everyone else didn’t know about that. :( So may be I was just hallucinating :)




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