Big surprise: BlackBerry CEO says tablets are a bad business

If you’re looking for a good example of someone who’s out of  touch with the technology world, look no further than BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins.

Heins, who also thinks that Apple is falling behind on innovation and that BlackBerry will sell tens of millions of Q10 phones, says he doesn’t see much of a future in tablets.

“In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore. Maybe a big screen in your workspace, but not a tablet as such. Tablets themselves are not a good business model,” Heins said at a conference in Los Angeles yesterday.

Naturally, the first impulse is to cite sales of the iPad, which were still doing well last I checked. Tablets may not be a viable business for BlackBerry, but they’ve already proven to be a particularly great one for Apple. This reality makes Heins’ comments seem almost inconceivably myopic coming from the head of a major technology company.

Of course, the real question here is what Heins’ views on tablets mean for BlackBerry’s own tablet ambitions. The PlayBook was, by most metrics, a failure, which largely explains why BlackBerry never put much weight behind a successor. As a result, it’s safe to assume we won’t see another PlayBook anytime soon — if ever.

The alternative view here is that Heins is, on some level, correct. Considering how fast technology moves, it’s not inconceivable that we could soon move onto something more advanced than tablets. But will that transition happen in the next five years? Probably not.