Research in Motion(RIM) has been quietly touting a big press event Monday in San Francisco and it appears its Black Pad tablet may be the main event. Officially, RIM isn’t talking about the event. It’s way secretive, but we’re told it’s important. The RIM press briefing is expected to go down Monday before its developer conference in San Francisco. At the event, RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis will deliver the keynote at Moscone West.
The tablet computer is going to emulate the success of BlackBerry’s Apps Store and make use of the safe reputation BlackBerry devices still have in corporate circles. Major enterprise applications vendors like Citrix, whose Receiver app is a hit on the Apple iPad, are understood to be planning to support RIM’s device. The device, which is expected to be launched at a RIM developer conference, will mark a new challenge to the dominance of Apple’s iPad in the tablet computer market, coming as Samsung, Dell and Motorola all prepare similar devices that run on the increasingly popular Android operating system made by Google.
The Black Pad will be using a new operating system instead of BlackBerry OS 6 and will come with a 7-inch screen. Most likely, the Black Pad will boast the QNX operating system from a company bought by RIM. Speculation abounds that a new Storm, as well as a BlackPad tablet device, will debut next week at DEVCON 2010, the Waterloo-based company’s four-day developer conference in San Francisco. Images of the Storm 3, a smartphone, were leaked to several websites on Tuesday. Sporting a 3.7-inch touch-screen, no visible keyboard and an ultrathin profile, the new Storm looks to be a direct challenge to the iPhone 4 from Apple Inc.
The Journal reported that the BlackPad would be available before the end of the year and feature a 7-inch (15.4-centimetre) screen, one or two cameras, and the ability to connect to the internet by tethering to a nearby BlackBerry handset. It will also come with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi capabilities and will feature a new operating system made by QNX Software Systems, a company which RIM bought in April for $200 million.
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