14 DAY TRIAL // Although BlackBerry PlayBook's sales were unexpectedly low due to its prohibitive price, it looks like Research in Motion (RIM) is trying to increase the amount of units sold by introducing the tablet to more markets.
The Canadian company recently announced that its PlayBook tablet is now available in South Africa from one of the four major carriers in the country, Cell C.
The carrier will offer all three Wi-Fi BlackBerry PlayBook models that feature different amount of storage: 16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB.
There's no word on the tablet's price options, but Cell C is known for offering good deals on RIM's BlackBerry smartphone. Hopefully, this will be case with the BlackBerry PlayBook as well.
“With its industry-leading performance, easy manageability and enterprise grade security, the BlackBerry PlayBook is an ideal tablet for the enterprise and SME user. The BlackBerry PlayBook tablet will enable business customers to take communication and productivity to the next level,” said Rui Brites, Director of Product Management for Africa at RIM.
The tablet has a 7-inch WSVGA LCD touchscreen that supports 1024 x 600 pixels resolution, and features the highly-acclaimed ultra-portable design, which is specific to most 7-inch slates.
BlackBerry PlayBook is powered by an 1GHz dual core TI OMAP 4430 CPU, which is complemented by a PowerVR SGX540 graphics processing unit.
The slate does not come with a microSD card slot, instead it packs 16/32/64 GB onboard memory and 1 GB of RAM.
“We are delighted to launch the BlackBerry PlayBook to our subscribers. In addition to its many benefits for business users, the BlackBerry PlayBook offers an exceptional multimedia and web experience that our customers will enjoy,” added Simon Camerer, Cell C’s Executive Head of Marketing.
The PlayBook is delivered with support for Adobe Flash, multitasking, high resolution video playback (H.264, MPEG4, WMV), and 1080p HDMI output.
On the back, it has a 5-megapixel camera with autofocus, while on the front there's a secondary 3-megapixel camera.