This week, The Wall Street Journal’s Julia Angwin interviewed RIM’s Co-CEO Jim Balsillie on The Big Interview. Balsillie spends much of the interview defending the high security of BlackBerry software and devices, to which Angwin agrees with him saying she has owned BlackBerry’s and has never had viruses, nor any other concerns. Once the interview gets past all the “tight government secret issues” that Balsillie can’t talk about, he advises that in about 60 days, a Native Email client will come to the PlayBook, as well as how easy it will to download any native apps that BlackBerry produces.
“We will have, if you want, a standalone non-web, non-paired email client on it within the next, I believe it was 60 days scheduled.” – Jim Balsillie on the WSJ The Big Interview
RIM may be releasing an unfinished product, but I for one don’t want my security compromised, and happy that they are focusing on these high security issues.
Balsillie gives a great interview, not only talking about the business applications, but also the regular consumer as he discusses the performance, portability, and convinence of the PlayBook. He also discusses how fast the HTML5 and Flash equipped device the PlayBook is to access the web, as well as the strength of the media capabilites of the device, advising that an Android media player will be coming sometime this summer.