The Tablet Market Heats Up With The BlackBerry PlayBook

Another day, another tablet!

Yes sir, and just as expected, now that Apple has entered the tablet market, the Apple copy cats have been starting to come out in droves, with the latest coming from the giant from the great white north RIM and their spanking new business tablet, the BlackBerry PlayBook, that was just announced yesterday and seen in the YouTube video above.

Spec wise, well it's a pretty dang impressive tablet, and even more so than the iPad already is in several key areas such as its 1 GB of RAM, which is some four bloody times that of the iPad. As you can see from AppleInsider's coverage yesterday, the juicy specs are as follows:

• 7-inch LCD, 1024 x 600, WSVGA, capacitive touch screen with full multi-touch and gesture support
• BlackBerry Tablet OS with support for symmetric multiprocessing
• 1 GHz dual-core processor
• 1 GB RAM
• Dual HD cameras (3 MP front facing, 5 MP rear facing), supports 1080p HD video recording
• Video playback: 1080p HD Video, H.264, MPEG, DivX, WMV
• Audio playback: MP3, AAC, WMA
• HDMI video output
• Wi-Fi - 802.11 a/b/g/n
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
• Connectors: microHDMI, microUSB, charging contacts
• Open, flexible application platform with support for WebKit/HTML-5, Adobe Flash Player 10.1, Adobe Mobile AIR, Adobe Reader, POSIX, OpenGL, Java
• Ultra thin and portable:
• Measures 5.1”x7.6”x0.4” (130mm x 193mm x 10mm)
• Weighs less than a pound (approximately 0.9 lb or 400g)
• Additional features and specifications of the BlackBerry PlayBook will be shared on or before the date this product is launched in retail outlets.
• RIM intends to also offer 3G and 4G models in the future.

Again, these are pretty impressive specs for a tablet that won't see the light of day until early next year. These specs were specifically designed to make the PlayBook the standard for business tablets. As far as a business tablet goes, I would have thought that "WorkBook" would have been a better choice of a name than "PlayBook", but then again, what-in-hell do I know?

RIM is boasting that its new BlackBerry OS based tablet for the suits will be great and all, but one thing that they where completely silent about was the battery life and the PlayBook's price, which, to me, suggests that it's probably not that great.

As I stated yesterday, you can now expect to see a virtual flood of these new tablets over the coming next year, and all thanks, in very large part, to the enormous success of the iPad. Besides the new PlayBook, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Sharp Galapagos, Dell Streak , etc., there is also the recently announced Kno tablet texbook, seen below, but expect more, a lot more.

So, how will these growing legions of tablets effect their inspiration, the iPad; can they beat it at its own game?

No way, thank-you-very-much! At least not for the next little while according to some analysts, such as Canacccord Genuity's T. Michael Walkley. According to Mr. Walkley, he is quoted, from a recent Fortune post, as saying:

"Given the iPad's time-to-market advantage, superior user interface, and leading application ecosystem," he writes, "we believe Apple will maintain both market share and value share leadership in 2010 and 2011 for this new product category.

"Based on leading content for its iPad device, we believe demand for iPads will likely remain ahead of Apple's ability to supply iPads in [the second half of 2010]. Should iPad production continue to ramp, we believe our 13.4M estimate for 2010 and 25.5M estimate for 2011 could prove conservative."

In fact, Fortune's post also states that Apple could even outsell its nearest rivals by a whopping 4 to 1 in 2011, as Android tablets "Struggle" to get a foot hold.

Well, in conclusion, I don't think that anybody really knows what exactly will happen as the competition heats up, but one thing is certain: expect to see the market flooded come this time next year, and that's a guarantee!

And that's my 2 cents 4 this Tuesday, September 28, 2010