Yesterday at DevCon 2010, Research in Motion (RIM) unveiled a new "enterprise-ready" 7-inch touchscreen BlackBerry tablet called the PlayBook. Is this a serious business contender to Apple's iPad?
The PlayBook is interesting. First, RIM have packed a lot of power into a small shell.
Without a doubt this is an enterprise-level bit of kit and while it has features that will appeal to consumers, I think that the price is likely to put it out of their reach. This is all about RIM locking up the BlackBerry users, and BlackBerry Enterprise Server customers into a BlackBerry tablet before they start thinking about migrating to different tablets (not necessarily the iPad since Apple's walled garden approach to app development won't sit well with enterprises looking to develop bespoke apps).
Availability is slated as early 2011.
How will it do? I think this is one of those wait and see situations.
So, what do you think? Is this a relevant device, or just an iPad for folks in suits? How will its relevance be affected by the release of Windows-based tablets?