By Charles Arthur – The Guardian

BlackBerry’s chief executive has said that in five years “I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet any more” – but he expects the company to sell “tens of millions” of its new keyboard-based Q10 handsets.

Speaking to the Bloomberg news service, Thorsten Heins said: “In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet any more. Maybe a big screen in your workspace, but not a tablet as such. Tablets themselves are not a good business model.”

In contrast with Apple, which saw sales of its iPad tablet jump by 65% year on year to 19.4m in the most recent quarter, BlackBerry has had little success in the tablet space since the launch in 2011 of its 7in PlayBook tablet. Since the launch it has proved a poor business for BlackBerry, which has shipped a total of 2.4m over eight fiscal quarters, and it had to take a $485m charge in 2011 against unsold inventory. In the same period Apple has shipped 111.8m iPads, including an unknown number of its new 8in iPad mini, and generated a total of $58.7bn in revenues.

… read more in The Guardian