RIM Exiting Tablet Biz

That’s what it looks like:

RIM’s PlayBook, an attempt at securing a foothold in the popular tablet category largely dominated by Apple Inc.’s iPad, won’t be upgraded to support its BlackBerry 10 operating system, the company’s CEO Thorsten Heins said during a conference call Friday morning.

“We were looking at solutions that could move the BlackBerry 10 experience to Playbook, but unfortunately, I’m not satisfied with the level of performance and user experience and I made the difficult decision to stop these efforts and focus on our core hardware portfolio,” said Mr. Heins.

In other words, the Playbook’s hardware isn’t up to the demands of BB10, which has been out for months. Meanwhile, an iPad 2 from the same year will run Apple’s upcoming iOS 7 just fine.

You get what you pay for, and BlackBerry’s heavily-discounted tablets just aren’t worth it.