The arrival of much cheaper 7-inch tablets from the likes of Amazon did not help either, as they undercut the PlayBook by up to $300 (Amazon's Kindle Fire is $199 while the PlayBook launched at $500, and then began to be heavily discounted).

There's still hope for Research In Motion though. After several delays, the anticipated BlackBerry will ship with the new tablet. All the features you would expect are now there, including email, calendar, contacts, and video chat. But given the lack of any substantial improvements to the tablet (for example the $200 Google Nexus 7 has a higher-resolution display), adding 4G connectivity to the PlayBook might for RIM.

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