Blackberry CEO Thinks Smartphones Will Replace Tablets Within Five Years

Blackberry CEO Thorsten Heins believes that the tablet will be a dead device within the next five years.

The man who is charged with turning around a company that was once at the top of the heap doesn’t have much respect for his competitors.

Speaking to Bloomberg at the Milken Institute conference, Heins claimed,, “In five years, I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore.”

The head of the Canadian company formerly known as RIM added that he believes that big screen computers in the workplace might become the norm but tablets will be phased out.

Blackberry itself tried to get into the tablet market back in 2011 with the Playbook. That effort was met with disastrous results and appeared to be contributor in the company’s long spiral downwards.

So what is going to replace the tablet in the executive’s mind? Heins believes that the smartphone is moving quickly to fill a need for mobile computing.

The CEO said that he uses a smartphone for almost all of his computing needs and turns to a Playbook on rare occasions.

He admits that the smartphone cannot yet do everything that is needed when it comes to actual work but the day when they can is coming fast.

The birth and boom of the Phablet seems to back up the man’s words to some extent. If the phones with an oversized screen really do become the norm, there will hardly be a need for a stand alone tablet.

There are some who believe that the Phablet boom is actually more an indication that the tablet is taking over the smartphone market.

That discussion is starting to look more and more like a “chicken or the egg” type discussion.

It should also be pointed out that the Canadian electronics company has not exactly had a great track record when it comes to predicting the market.

Blackberry announced earlier this month that they would be discontinuing their BBM Music service less than two years after they launched.