Canadian mobile handset maker Research in Motion too was reported to be working on Apple iPad competitor codenamed – BlackPad. Now, The Wall Street Journal has reported that RIM will unveil the new tablet along with BlackBerry OS 6.0, as early as next week at the Developer Conference 2010 in San Francisco.
This tablet has been internally codenamed as BlackPad and will be released in the fourth quarter of this year. We aren’t sure if it will be unveiled by the end of the year or early next year. Blackberry is all set to unwrap its first ever tablet PC known as Black Pad in the RIM’s developer conference to be held next week on Sep 27.
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.
“Unlike the recently launched Torch, this touch-screen BlackBerry appears a leap forward from prior generations,” Mike Abramsky, a financial analyst with RBC Capital Markets, said via e-mail.
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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