Research in Motion’s tablet will never reach the success of the iPad or the Fire. And this was avoidable. RIM never determined the appropriate market.

Some RIM executives envisioned the PlayBook as a fancier BlackBerry, and wanted to market business executives. Other RIM officials wanted to skew younger. They wanted to embrace what makes the iPad so wildly successful — flashy ads, customizable features, and attention to movies and music.

This disconnect in RIM manifested itself in an a proposed ad campaign. At one point, RIM discussed an ad that would use humor and celebrities like New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. The spot’s tagline: Go Pro. “There’s an internal war going on around the marketing message. Even the guys at the top don’t agree,” a RIM executive said at that time.

The indecision over a target audience, and RIM’s general reluctance to move away from its bread-and-butter demographic — business clientele — led to the PlayBook’s failure. And think of it this way: Certainly business folks buy and use iPads. Just head to any commuter rail today at 5 p.m.

Read more at The Wall Street Journal ^[1].