14 DAY TRIAL // Canadian mobile phone maker Research In Motion is expected to bring to shelves its first tablet PC, the BlackBerry PlayBook sometime during the first quarter of the next year, at least on the North American market.
The slate, RIM's direct response to Apple's iPad and to an increasing number of Android-based tablet PCs, was unveiled officially a few months ago, and runs under the BlackBerry Tablet OS, based on the software developed by QNX.
According to a recent article on DigiTimes, Gregory Wade, regional VP for Asia Pacific of RIM, confirmed that the slate is set to make an appearance on shelves in the North American continent sometime in the first quarter of the next year.
Moreover, he also unveiled the fact that Research In Motion aims at global availability for the slate sometime in the second quarter of the next year.
The BlackBerry Playbook will be aimed mainly at business users, Wave stated, adding that the tablet PC will offer support for WebKit, Java, Adobe Flash and more, and that users would enjoy full security updates for the software.
The price tag at which RIM plans on making the tablet PC available on the market was set at US$500, Wade announced.
Packing a 7-inch, 1024 x 600 pixels, capacitive multitouch display, the slate is powered by a Cortex A9-based, dual-core 1GHz CPU, complemented by 1GB of RAM, and should offer increased performance levels for all users.
The specifications list of the tablet PC also includes WiFi 802.11a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1 connectivity options, along with HDMI port and microUSB jack.
At the same time, the slate should boast 16GB or 32GB of internal memory, a 5-megapixel photo snapper, and a 3-megapixel front-facing camera for video conferencing.
All in all, it appears that the BlackBerry Playbook will be able to offer great value for money, especially when compared to other similar devices on the market, which boast higher price tags, while being able to offer the same or lower hardware specs.