In case you were holding out for a BlackBerry PlayBook: good news. Research In Motion this morning announced (expected) plans to make the tablet computer available in more than 20,000 retail outlets in the U.S. and Canada. Indeed, pricing starts at $499.
In the U.S., outlets include AT&T, Best Buy, Office Depot, RadioShack, Sprint and Staples.
Best Buy has already announced that the tablet computer is scheduled to be available from all Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile stores in the United States, as well as Best Buy and Future Shop stores in Canada, on April 19.
At Best Buy, the BlackBerry PlayBook with Wi-Fi will come in three models, featuring 16GB, 32GB or 64GB of storage at $499, $599 and $699 respectively.
BB customers can place their orders beginning today by visiting their local Best Buy store or by ordering on-line (starting at 8am ET).
Further reading:
Infograph Fun: BlackBerry Playbook vs Dell Streak 7 vs Apple iPad vs Moto Xoom
RIM Outs The PlayBook BlackBerry Tablet [Update: Video Demo!] (September 2010)
The full lineup of retailers and wireless carriers currently expected to carry the PlayBook:
United States
AT&T
Best Buy
Cbeyond
Cellular South
Cincinnati Bell
Office Depot
RadioShack
ShopBlackBerry.com
Staples
Sprint
Verizon
BlackBerry from Wireless Giant
Canada
Bell
Best Buy
Chapters / Indigo
Costco
Future Shop
Mobilicity
MTS Allstream
Rogers
Sasktel
Sears
ShopBlackBerry.com
Staples
Telus
Tbooth Wireless
The Source
Videotron
Walmart
WIND Mobile
WIRELESS etc.
WIRELESSWAVE
The BlackBerry PlayBook (launched April 2011) has multi-touch capacitive 7-inch display, 1GHz dual-core CPU, 1GB of RAM, an e-reader app, and the ability to tether to a BlackBerry phone. The PlayBook runs Flash 10.1 and HTML 5 along with supporting 1080p hardware accelerated video. There’s Micro HDMI and Micro USB connections, along with a 3MP front and 5MP rear-facing camera. That HDMI connection can even output video to dual displays.
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