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lthough the BlackBerry PlayBook 2.0 is slated for release this February, its manufacturer, Research in Motion (RIM), is yet to confirm when the device will actually enter the Indonesian market.

David J. Smith, senior vice president of BlackBerry PlayBook, announced in an official blog post in October that RIM had decided to postpone the release of the device to ensure that “the expectation of developers, enterprise customers and end-users” were met.

However, past experiences show that there is usually a gap between the official launch of a product with when the device actually hits the domestic market. The first version of the PlayBook was released for the US market in April 2011 but only entered Indonesia in July.

“We haven’t announced any formal timing at the moment,” Oliver Pilgerstorfer, RIM senior PR manager for Southeast Asia, told The Jakarta Post.

Pilgerstorfer added that he could not provide definite dates other than what was indicated, and that the same applied for the BlackBerry 10, the latest operating system upgrade from RIM.

He reiterated the message from RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis in December, which stated that BlackBerry 10-operated smartphones would not be marketed until “the latter part of the 2012 calendar”, pending the availability of the required chipset.

However, a blog alleged that the shipment was delayed not because of the missing chipset, but because RIM had no working product. RIM has denied the charges.

In the meantime, Indonesian fans of BlackBerry will have to make do with the devices running on BlackBerry 7.

“Our CEOs have indicated that we will continue to invest in the BlackBerry 7 operating system,” Pilgerstorfer added.

The delay in shipment date, many commented, was another smudge on RIM’s lackluster performance during last year.

Poor sales of the PlayBook, including the delay of the PlayBook 2.0, hurt fiscal earnings in the third quarter. RIM took a US$485 million hit in this quarter due to unsold PlayBooks.

Darwin Lie, associate market analyst at IDC Indonesia, said the turmoil at RIM, including shipment delays of OS 7, would not significantly impact on short run sales in the domestic market.

Indonesia is the fastest-growing market for RIM. An IDC study found that RIM was within the top three smartphone vendors in the local market.

RIM itself expects a two-fold increase in subscriptions by 2015, from five million to 9.7 million.

According to Darwin, the Indonesian market was a “trend follower, not a trendsetter”, which used BlackBerry devices mainly to access the BlackBerry Messenger service.

“In Indonesia, a majority of the shipped BlackBerry products, 60 percent, are those priced around Rp 2 million,” he said.

The BlackBerry Bold series with OS 7 is priced above Rp 4 million. Meanwhile, those running on OS 5, such as the BlackBerry Curve 8530, cost around Rp 1 million online.

Yet, in the long run, market competitors would capitalize on the absence of new BlackBerry products by introducing “affordable products and alternatives to BlackBerry Messenger”, Darwin said.

“Those who would probably take the market share of BlackBerry were vendors who launched smartphones below Rp 1.2 million,” he said, adding that the Android OS and Windows OS would gain traction in 2012.

As for the PlayBook 2.0, RIM could seize the tablet market share if their product could match or have better specifications than its competitors, he said, adding that Samsung and Apple led the tablet market.

Overall, BlackBerry had to quickly enter the market once their new operating systems were available, so that competing vendors could be tackled, besides enriching the user experience with new releases, he said.

“They have to maintain the elite status of BlackBerry,” he added.