Canada-based RIM said this week it’ll start selling its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet on April 19 in the US and Canada for $499.
There will be 20,000 retailers, RIM said, including Best Buy, Office Depot, Staples, AT&T, Verizon Wireless, RadioShack, Sears Canada and Wal-Mart Canada.
Best Buy said it’s taking pre-orders now. RIM said the PlayBook is “scheduled to be available from all Best Buy stores and Best Buy Mobile stores in the US, as well as Best Buy and Best Buy’s Future Shop stores in Canada, on April 19.”
The PlayBook has only a 7-inch screen. It has no cellular connectivity except via a 3G connection to a BlackBerry smartphone. That’ll make the corporate IT departments happy because it gives them better control of their data and applications through the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. And, a separate data plan is not needed.
RIM has announced future PlayBooks with WiMAX, LTE and HSPA+ cellular connectivity.
Like Apple and HP, RIM uses its own operating system called QNX. It was the best tablet we saw at CES. Apple did not have a tablet at CES! Particularly impressive was its ability to run apps simultaneously and the suggestion that it would run Android apps.
The PlayBook comes in three models: 16GB at $499, 32GB at $599 and 64GB at $699.
It will appeal to most every BlackBerry user, especially the corporates.
In addition to the iPad, it’ll compete with a slew of tablets running the Android Honeycomb OS from the likes of Motorola, Samsung and Asus.
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