Research in Motion (RIM) has announced in their annual BlackBerry Developer Conference, by CEO Mike Lazaridis, the company’s new tablet called the PlayBook. The tablet will employ an OS created by the recently acquired QNX (just like the rumour said) called the BlackBerry Tablet OS. It’ll offer full OpenGL and POSIX support alongside web standards such as HTML5. All these will be tied into RIM’s new WebWorks SDK. Read more…

After being MIA for quite some time, RIM’s long-rumoured tablet is getting cooked up, again. Wall Street Journal has a news report that says the tablet, Blackpad or SurfBook or whatever, will be launched by RIM as early as next week! Now if you look in the calendar, next week is the company’s Develop Conference in San Francisco. The QNX operating system is also sticking to this tablet. The only connectivity you’ll get from this brick would be through Wi-Fi, which means this thing won’t be sold with a data plan and contract.

The manufacturing wizards at Quanta are rumored to be on tap for manufacturing it with some sort of Marvell power under the hood, and even if the tablet ultimately fails Foleo-style, it could still be a huge launch: WSJ’s sources are also saying that RIM will end up migrating all of its phones to QNX in the long term.

SOURCE via Wall Street Journal

Okay, sometimes big corporates will go and trademark any names that they think of during lunch time, the patents first and ask questions later concept. So it’s no shocker to see RIM filing the name “SurfBook”. The name “SurfBook” was filed in early August, only to show up in Canada’s filing system recently. But seriously, you can’t blame us for imagining much funny stuff when you go and file a word that has a “Book” and “Surf” in it. Ok. Perhaps filing a patent with the word “Book” is nothing worth nothing ten years back but not these days.

There’s no matching documentation in the USPTO just yet. Surfing a site called “SurfBook”, or accessing the cyberspace using a “SurfBook”. RIM, what on earth happened to your BlackPad? No more love for the black? Maybe we’ll get a “SurfPad” to surf with, you know?

SOURCE via Electronista

When RIM acquired the infotainment special QNX Software Systems back in April, nobody knew what they’re up to. Now, some lights have been shed, as according to Bloomberg, three separate sources are citing a report claiming that RIM intends to run operating system built by QNX on its upcoming BlackPad tablet.

It’s curious that the company is opting against upscaling its BlackBerry 6 operating system into the tablet space, though one of the sources suggested that’s due to legacy code hanging around in the still new OS, making it easier to just start afresh when building the slate’s software package. It shall be very interesting indeed to see how well this $200 million investment works out for RIM; it’ll certainly be the biggest departure from the BlackBerry maker’s conservative norm.

SOURCE via Bloomsberg

Apple Daily has some new rumours of the BlackPad that was so mysterious. Besides giving the Apple iPad a kick in the shiny metal butt with some modern specs like front-and-rear-facing cameras, it’s going to sport 9.7-inch multitouch panel. Other standard specs would be like Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi 802.11n. Quanta is said to have won the bid to manufacture the tablet with plans to ramp up for 2 million units starting in September, with another 8 million planned for 2011. Quite ambitious there. But with the price of $499, RIM would need to have more tricks up its sleeve.

[via Next Media]

What we have here is a UI for tablet, named Macallan. The name sounds sweet, but you’ve yet to see the interface that it’s providing. With a ‘page turning’ theme, this is something that UI Centric is integrating into the Windows 7 tablet OS. What’s more, it supports multitasking, which you can see in the video below. Read more…

It was quite awhile ago when we reported that RIM is getting into the tablet business. But now, this is surely something to recon that the rumor is very true. RIM has just acquired blackpad.com and it would not have been a joke or ‘for fun’ for them to simply register a certain URL that is so closely named with terms that would relate to tablets right? Well, RIM and AT&T (US Carrier) is holding a press conference this coming Tuesday, so we should expect to see some interesting ‘revealing’ of a certain product by then.

Read more…

There are rumors around saying that RIM (Research In Motion) is working on a tablet. Rumor says it is going to be known as the Blackpad or Cobalt. The device is expected to get a 8.9-inch screen, with RIM reportedly ordering such displays from Hon Hai. Fully compatible with Blackberry OS. There’s also word about 3G and Wifi connectivity.

[via TechFresh]