It looks like a good way of getting unreleased information from BlackBerry is to simply ask. A BlackBerry PlayBook user asked via Twitter whether BlackBerry 10 (BB10) would be coming to the beleaguered tablet and he received a response directly from the official BlackBerry Mexico Twitter account.
The response read :@carlos_wmg Hello. In the next few weeks will be available OS10 update w/ the #PlayBook ! Please be alert!"
The post has since been deleted, so it's unclear whether the BlackBerry Mexico rep was simply incorrect, or if the news is real and the company is looking to keep it under wraps for now.
BB10 is Blackberry's home-cooked operating system and it took the company years to bake it. The OS represents one of the company's last best hopes for maintaining a foothold in a smartphone and tablet market dominated by Apple, Samsung and others.
BB10 has received fairly positive reviews, debuting so far on the Z10, Q10 and Q5 smartphones. Additionally, the first prototype device that developers initially tested BB10 on –– designated Dev Alpha A –– was said to resemble a small BlackBerry PlayBook.
The news of BB10 possibly coming to the BlackBerry PlayBook stands at odds with what many of the company's execs have been publically stating about the tablet market in general.
"In five years I don't think there'll be a reason to have a tablet anymore," Heins said in an interview at the Milken Institute conference in Los Angeles. "Maybe a big screen in your workspace, but not a tablet as such. Tablets themselves are not a good business model."
The success of numerous tablets from multiple manufacturers seems to contradict that assertion, but it's certainly possible that a tablet incapable of streaming Netflix, among other things, is not a good business model. Hopefully, the BB10 update will come to fruition and the PlayBook will be given a second lease on life.
