Is the PlayBook 4G Delayed Until This Fall?

Somehow we missed this yesterday, but it seems as if the BlackBerry PlayBook 4G is shelved until the fall. This broke during the RIM earning call and ironically only hours after we reported that O2 wasn’t going to carry the 3G PlayBook at all. RIM’s CEO Mike Lazaridis didn’t come out and say “We suck and are delaying the PlayBook until this fall.” Nope, he simply stated in passing that he was excited about the Fall release of the PlayBook so the delay isn’t exactly official.

The PlayBook 4G was originally slated for a summer release, which works out to just a few months after the April launch of the 3G model. The delay now pushes the 4G version to almost irrelevance and paints a sad story similarly to the one I foretold before its official announcement.