RIM's iPad rival 'arrives next week'
BlackPad on launch pad
Blackberry maker Research in Motion "could" unveil its iPad challenger next week at its developer conference in San Francisco, according to a report citing "people familiar with RIM's plans."
The Wall Street Journal reports that the long rumored RIM tablet – referred to by some within the company as the "BlackPad" – will reach the market in the fourth quarter with a 7-inch display and, um, either one or two cameras. It wil also offer BlueTooth and broadband networking, but it will only connect to cellular networks through the company's BlackBerry handhelds.
The tablet will not, the paper's sources say, use the RIM's BlackBerry 6 operating system. Instead, it will use a brand new OS fashioned by QNX Software System, the embedded OS outfit purchased by RIM earlier this year.
The Journal also says that RIM plans to eventually move its BlackBerry smartphone to the new QNX operating system as well. The tablet will be manufactured by Taiwan's Quanta Computer Inc., the paper's sources say, and it will use chips from Marvell Technology Group, an outfit based in Santa Clara, California. ®
COMMENTS
WTF?
"but it will only connect to cellular networks through the company's BlackBerry handhelds"
Nice, so I need 2 devices. How convenient.
This won't be an iPad killer
RIM doesn't have a good track record on rushing out copy cat devices, look what happened with the Storm smartphone, which was meant to be an iPhone killer.
RIM should stick to trying to develop their own ideas, they seem to do better when they do that.
Tethered to a Blackberry handheld
means having full access to any resources that are made available through a BES. That could be a very compelling solution in all sorts of business applications.
QNX. Nice.
IIRC, QNX also has a Qt-based GUI thingy, which means you can do GUI apps with relative ease. Good choice for RIM; not sure about switching their OS for a QNX-based one, but then again, given the trouble with BB OS's memory management on devices < 256Mb, it is probably needed. I gotta see this device...
