BlackBerry PlayBook Email Support Lacking Because Of The Built-In Security Of BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Servers)

Tweet

While many are still scratching their heads as to why RIM launched the BlackBerry PlayBook without native email support, it looks like the reason as to why may have come down to a simple matter of lack of vision.

And as that may sound a bit harsh, we do suppose that it was logical to think users would only be carrying one device, or maybe more accurately, only having a need to access their email from one mobile device. Of course, times change and it seems like RIM has been caught in a bad situation now that they have the PlayBook tablet and a full line of smartphones.

With that, we should clarify that the reason being given has not been confirmed by RIM and at this time comes by way of a report from the Business Insider who is citing “a source.” In other words, while it sounds like a good story, we have to remain skeptical.

That being said, the reason given is as follows;

“The Blackberry email system is the BES — which is the source/focus of all the famous BB security. The BES email server has the concept of one user = one device (or they call it PIN).”

And to follow up on that, it was also noted that it would take RIM a “significant” amount of work to make the BES support multiple devices (PINs).

Nonetheless, while this sounds like a logical statement and seems rather believable, we sort of have a hard time thinking that RIM would not have realized this up front and found someway to make it work before the release of the PlayBook.

And lastly, for those left scratching their heads about these PINs. Here is how they are described over on Wikipedia. To begin with, the PIN is an “eight character hexadecimal identification number assigned to each BlackBerry device.” And from that, they are tracked by the BlackBerry Enterprise Servers and then “used to direct messages to a BlackBerry device.”

Bottom line, each device has a unique PIN and the servers push the email based on the PIN, hence the “one user = one device” part of the source statement. Anyway, assuming that is the case, one could still think that RIM could have added an email app where you could access other accounts over POP3 or IMAP and just left the BlackBerry email support as coming.