BlackBerry takes wraps off its tablet

The much rumoured “BlackPad” has been revealed. Last night at the company’s developer conference CEO Mike Lazarides introduced its Apple iPad rival.

We know little more than the tech specs right now but the preview video looks pretty cool. Price? Well that is mooted by the guys at PR News to be double an iPad, estimated to be between $1,000 and $1,300. That is a lot! When can we get our sticky fingers on it? According to an interview with BlackBerry’s Dan Dodge, it will be early 2011 in North America and next summer in the UK. That is a long time!

BlackBerry is keeping its focus on their enterprise market and the video above specifically calls the device “enterprise ready” and a “professional tablet”. They are clearly positioning the device in a different place to Apple’s iPad. But then why call it a PlayBook? Not sure an enterprise IT director would countenance deploying 1,000 PlayBooks across his organisation?

As with the iPhone and iPad before it, key to the BlackBerry PlayBook’s success will be the range of apps available and the speed with which they become available. Apple has a huge head start and my feeling is that this will simply be another device wealthy BlackBerry fanatics will buy to “play” with in airport lounges.

© BlackBerry “.BlackBerry Playbook- Preview” Video.

Latest Posts

The latest data from Buffer has indicated that less isn’t more on LinkedIn after all – and posting more frequently on is key to cutting through the noise. Tamilore Oladipo shared the LinkedIn insights at the end of August – taking data from over 2 million posts…
Read More
Twenty years ago, I started saying ‘social is the oil in the marketing engine’. Not the fuel. The oil. It reduces friction, carries signals, and makes everything run better. Back then it felt like a hunch. Today we can prove it. If you tune your social properly, you lift search,…
Read More
TikTok has launched a new advertising campaign aimed at reminding people just how important the app has become when it comes to discovering new music. The campaign, called “See Where Music Takes You”, is designed to show how TikTok connects music lovers and helps them find their next favourite songs…
Read More