Is Apple Game For This?

Since Apple launched its iPad in April this year, the market has become increasingly congested by so-called tablet devices that are larger than mobile phones but smaller than notebook PCs. In fact, netbooks (for want of a better name) have been around for quite a while, but not quite caught on like the iPad which Apple never seems to be able to make enough of.

Not long after Apple’s inception of the tablet industry, Samsung and Dell followed suit, as well as Hewlett Packard and Toshiba. As consumers go all rawrr-rawrr over the latest gizmo to hit the market, another heavyweight in the smart phone industry has just thrown down the gauntlet, for a share of the burgeoning tablet device market. Research in Motion (RIM) just today removed the wraps off its latest rival to the Apple iPad – the Blackberry Playbook. Dubbed as the “corporate” tablet, it promises better social networking capabilities as well as media publishing and corporate uses.

The new Blackberry Playbook will boast of a seven-inch screen and dual facing cameras. It has both WiFi and Bluetooth but would need to pair with a Blackberry phone to access cellular network. But unlike Apple’s iPad, it can also be used as a Blackberry phone, albeit on a larger screen platform. The PlayBook weighs 0.4kg and will be equipped with a dual-core, 1GHz processor running a QNX kernel and operating system, the same OS as the BlackBerry OS 6, introduced by RIM in its Torch smartphone in August. Moreover, the QNX operating system uses industry standard APIs, or application programing interfaces, meaning developers should face little difficulty for games creation, software and application development.

We definitely think the Blackberry Playbook will be a strong entry, judging from its specifications and functionalities. Should Steve Jobs start to worry? Not yet, perhaps, since it is going to be available only in early 2011. Looking at the current competition, it is hard to tell. However, we can be sure that the tablet market is definitely growing larger, and consumers are getting spoilt for choice. So what’s your pick?

(Source: Reuters)