RIM is on an all out blitz to defend its PlayBook tablet after negative reviews began hitting the Web on Wednesday.

[ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]Among the major criticisms from reviewers was the lack of a native email client for the PlayBook — a strange omission from the company that made its name on secure email.

RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie said that people are “overplaying one aspect that really isn’t a core element that we’ve seen from our enterprise customers or webmail people.”

Did RIM’s CEO just say that email isn’t a core element of the BlackBerry PlayBook?

Balsillie was also asked by Bloomberg about Mike Lazaridis stopping a BBC interview yesterday when asked about BlackBerry security. He fumbled a bit and never really answered the question.

Looking at the tablet market, Balsillie said he likes RIM’s chances.

“The opportunity is quite substantial,” said Balsillie. “Quite frankly, people are migrating how they do things and we’re smack dab in the middle as the No. 1 or No. 2 smartphone and smartphone platform in virtually every market around the world. I like our chances for a lot of markets here.”

As RIM has done repeatedly since announcing the PlayBook, Balsillie said users get access to the full Web (actually he said “the full full Web,” but I don’t know what that is).

“I think this product is an amazing platform,” said Balsillie. “It’s something we can run with a long, long time into the future. I feel very excited about where we are.”

I’m glad you are, because nobody else seems to be.

You can watch the video here.