Play your way to grab RIM's Playbook at just $500
By siliconindia   |   Thursday, 11 November 2010, 21:56 IST
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Bangalore: RIM's entry into the tablet market will begin in the first quarter of 2011. RIM Co-CEO Jim Balsillie said in an interview in Seoul that the Play Book will be sold for less than $500 in bid to the current leader of the tablet market, Apple's iPad. Apple sells in a price range of $499 to $829, depending on storage space and support for 3G data communication. Some of the experts opined that RIM can't hang with that pricing power either, but may accept slim margins just to get into the tablet race. However, RIM's BlackBerry-based tablet is quite a different beast from Apple's iPad. It will have a smaller, 7-inch LCD touch screen, more RAM (1 GB versus the iPad's 256 MB), HDMI video output and dual cameras. Most importantly, it will be aimed at the corporate market, while the iPad is primarily a consumer-oriented device. This feat, however, will be more dependent on the versatility and quality of applications available for PlayBook than its hardware. RIM's Playbook is essentially a vessel for Adobe's platform Flash and AIR. RIM will rely heavily on Adobe's software to deliver apps and other platforms. BlackBerry's PlayBook tablet will stand apart from Apple's iPad for not only its size - it has a seven-inch display as against iPad's 9.7 inches, but also its Adobe Flash for running video and graphic works. Apple has shunned Flash. Even though RIM has posted 20 percent growth in the last quarter and is close to reaching 60 million BlackBerry subscribers worldwide, the outlook for the Canadian iconic company has been clouded as Apple has overtaken it in smart phone sales worldwide.

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