[4] The PlayBook also supported Android OS applications, allowing them to be sold and installed through the BlackBerry App World store.

[6] Many of the 700,000 units shipped to retailers allegedly remained on the shelves for months, prompting BlackBerry to introduce dramatic price reductions in November 2011 to increase sales.

Rumors about the device had circulated for several months before its announcement, and it was nicknamed 'BlackPad' in the press because of its expected similarity to Apple's competing iPad.

[13] It has a 7-inch, 1024×600 WSVGA display that has an aspect ratio of 16:9, making it adequate for viewing HD video content or other media, and it has 3D graphics acceleration.

It received a score of 428 in "The HTML5 Test" for its browser, placing 4th for tablets, ahead of the Chrome Beta, Chrome 18, iOS 7 (Safari), iOS 6.0 (Safari), Opera Mobile 12.10, Silk 2.2 (Amazon Kindle Fire), Internet Explorer 11, and Android 4.0 browsers with BlackBerry Tablet OS 2.1.

Walt Mossberg, columnist for The Wall Street Journal, wrote, "I got the strong impression RIM is scrambling to get the product to market.

"[19] RIM's then co-CEO Jim Balsillie countered critics by noting that there were more than 60 million BlackBerry smartphones in use with the ability to pair with a PlayBook.

[25] Popular Android applications that have not been ported onto BlackBerry world such as Pinterest and WhatsApp can be installed by users through the sideloading process.

[26] At first, a decision by BlackBerry to ship the PlayBook without native applications for e-mail and calendar became a source of criticism and derision by reviewers and users.

[29] On June 28, 2013, the company announced that plans to bring BlackBerry 10 to the PlayBook were cancelled [30] sparking fears of the device's potential scrapping.

According to BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins, multiple teams had spent "a great deal of time and energy" investigating ways to bring the OS to the device.

Ultimately, Heins intervened to cancel the project citing his dissatisfaction with the "level of performance and user experience".

While no immediate decisions over the device's future are certain, Heins did promise BlackBerry would "support PlayBook on the existing software platforms and configurations.

The first PlayBook was a 7 in (180 mm) tablet with Wi-Fi connectivity and a dual core, 1 GHz Texas Instruments OMAP 4430 processor.

[41] However, after lukewarm market reception, there were reports that the company allegedly revised its second-quarter estimates from 2.4 million down to 800,000 – 900,000 units.

According to Strategy Analytics figures in the 2011 second quarter, the PlayBook's market share in the middle of 2011 was 3.3%, compared to iOS (iPads) by Apple with 61.3%, Android by Google with 30.1%, and various Windows by Microsoft with 4.6%.