• Tweet

Research in Motion is making its quarterly earning report today, and while it’s hardly all good news, RIM has managed to convince at least a million people to use its 7 inch BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

The PlayBook launched in February, 2011. At the time the tablet featured attractive hardware but an unattractive price and a tough-sell operating system.

For $499 or more, you could buy a tablet that didn’t run very many third party apps and didn’t even have its own PIM (personal information management) apps for email, calendar, or contact management.

But over the past year RIM has made a number of changes. You can now pick up a PlayBook for as little as $199, and BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 adds native PIM functionality as well as support for some Android apps.

Those changes might not be enough to make the PlayBook into an iPad killer, but during today’s earnings call, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins said that there are “over one million PlayBook customers.”

It’s not clear that the company’s making much money from sales of $199 tablets. But at least it’s giving people reasons to use its products and services.