The tablet market is one of the fastest growing areas of the mobile industry. The iPad is hugely popular, with the iPad 5 expected to continue the trend, while Samsung expects to take over with the likes of the Galaxy Note 8 and newcomers like Microsoft's Surface Pro aim to grab a foothold. But according to BlackBerry, all these efforts are pointless.
In fact, BlackBerry says, in just a few years, tablets like the Surface Pro and iPad 5 might not even be necessary anymore.
"In five years I don't think there'll be a reason to have a tablet anymore," BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins said to Bloomberg News. "Maybe a big screen in your workspace, but not a tablet as such. Tablets themselves are not a good business model."
The company, pushing the BlackBerry Z10 and Q10, is also rethinking plans to introduce a tablet or PlayBook successor. Heins said that if a BlackBerry tablet were to ever happen, it would need to be very unique in order to stand out from a crowded market featuring the Galaxy Note 8, Surface Pro and a future iPad 5.
That said, Heins is more than confident about BlackBerry going forward.
"In five years, I see BlackBerry to be the absolute leader in mobile computing — that's what we're aiming for," Heins said. "I want to gain as much market share as I can, but not by being a copycat."
In an interview back in March, Heins made similar statements, saying his long-term goal is to replace laptops and tablets with smartphone devices.
"We are talking about a mobile-computing experience that makes sure that for you as a user, you only have to carry one computing device," Heins said. "Then you get peripherals around it that make your life much more easy than it is today carrying a tablet, carrying a smartphone, carrying a laptop, going to your office and having a desktop."
Heins also commented on the QWERTY keyboard-featured Q10 device, saying that the device, released in the UK recently, has a promising future ahead of it.
"We have very, very good first signs already after the launch in the UK," Heins said. "This is going into the installed base of more than 70 million BlackBerry users, so we have quite some expectations. We expect several tens of million of units."
