Research In Motion reveals its BlackBerry PlayBook

BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion Ltd. (RIMM) took the wraps off its first ever tablet at a developers conference in San Francisco this afternoon.
Packing a 7-inch screen in a half an inch thick form factor weighing less than a pound, BlackBerry PlayBook will run on an entirely new OS for RIM, which it acquired through QNX Software Systems. Built upon the QNX Neutrino microkernel architecture, but now called BlackBerry Tablet OS, the OS has been designed for the enterprise market from the start with years of experience in the transportation and medical fields. It features enterprise class scalability, security and support for standard tools like OpenGL for 3D graphics and Adobe Systems Inc.’s (ADBE) Flash Player 10.1, according to RIM.
RIM is also making it possible for Java developers to bring their BlackBerry 6 compliant applications to the BlackBerry Tablet OS environment.
“RIM set out to engineer the best professional-grade tablet in the industry with cutting-edge hardware features and one of the world’s most robust and flexible operating systems,” said Mike Lazaridis, president and Co-CEO at RIM. “The BlackBerry PlayBook solidly hits the mark with industry leading power, true multitasking, uncompromised web browsing and high performance multimedia.”
The device will run on a 1 GHz processor with 1 gigabyte of built-in memory. The first version of Playbook, which won’t be released until the second quarter of 2011, won’t ship with cellular connectivity. Instead, RIM is encouraging users to pair the device with their existing BlackBerry smart phones, thereby avoiding an additional monthly service fee. Of course, 3G and 4G versions will be released “in the future,” the company said, but there was no indication that they would ship immediately after the original Wi-Fi only version.
The device has dual-facing cameras, 1080p video recording and playback and an HDMI port. In addition to a long wait for release, pricing information was not announced.
After all, it may be called BlackBerry PlayBook for good reason, even beyond RIM’s obvious marketing attempt to capture more of the consumer crowd. Were the announcement made during a typical breaking news slot, or to much fanfare for that matter, one could envision a more grand focus or priority on tablets for RIM, but with the device’s availability pushed out to the second quarter of next year it’s hard to gauge much of anything.
Six months, the absolute short end of that time frame, could render Playbook outdated or past its prime. RIM finally made good on its delayed response to Apple Inc.’s () iPad, but while its Playbook waits on the sideline watching the seasons pass, its rivals are surely readying an arsenal of competing devices that might hit store shelves even sooner.