While there is greater demand for 3G/4G/LTE in 7″ than the larger tablets.

Demand may not be huge but there are people who want it. Some even have the exact opposite opinion as you and think tablets are useless without a modem for constant connectivity.

So let’s not confuse appeal of low cost with the lack of interest in such features.

Not everyone has constant access to WiFi, especially if they’re using the device on the go. Along with other bonuses like a tablet battery can usually last longer than a phones and can also be more useful for things like tethering.

“Cisco realized that corporate was not the way to go”

No, Cisco still deals with corporate. They’re just not doing a tablet and they weren’t exactly a tablet company to begin with but a networking company.

RIM hasn’t had “gigantic” security breaches. The worst they had was a vulnerability discovered in OS 6 over Javascript, which they patched.

Really, your data is safer on a Blackberry than pretty much any other device. Unless you’re talking about the outages they had but that was service and not security.

RIM’s secure messaging for example encrypts everything. So even if RIM itself gets hacked no one could read your messages.

While companies like Google get investigated for Anti-Trust activities. Circumventing things like whether cookies are allowed or not and ignoring do not track settings.

So RIM has it’s faults but making it easy for them to get your data is not one of them.

Still though you seem to be thinking of retail tablets and in your other post talk about corporate Even Cisco realized that corporate was not the way to go. RIM is insane for even attempting a second version of this disaster.

Speaking of disasters, RIM should be under heavy scrutiny for the way they handled those gigantic security breaches. So yet another means for them to have my data….no thanks.

Things like full drive encryption, their wide range of IT options, and secure communications still are things they can leverage.

Both iOS and Android are still playing catch up as far as those features are concerned but for many their enterprise offerings are already good enough and not every company needs the very best security and have to consider other company needs as well.

While for retail, the general consumers is where they are weakest. However, the Playbook is one of the few tablets that will still support Flash, its web browser also scores higher for HTML5 support than even the iPad, and still has a edge on multi-tasking and that’s before the spec bump from 1GHz to 1.5GHz.

Mind the Playbook will be upgraded to BB10 later. So unless the company tanks users can look forward to continued support.

In the meantime the upcoming 2.1 OS update should add some additional OS improvements, including better Android app support.

However, the pricing is still something that could hurt them even if the product itself convinces people to try it.

I counter that question with… How many offer LTE? This isn’t your usual WiFi only 7″ tablet.

Carrier dependent models tend to be priced noticeably higher than the WiFi only models.

This is in part due to the usually lower number of production and that models usually have to be customized for a given carrier unless they use the same type of network. So questionable that they could get the pricing as low as desired.

While waiting may not be much of a option for them with their declining market share and delay of BB10 until early next year.

However, that said, your point is valid and RIM should have tried to get the pricing lower to something more reasonable like $400.