LTE BlackBerry PlayBook Coming This Year, Says RIM CEO

Matt Burns

Matt is a Senior Editor at TechCrunch. Matt Burns is a family man first and attempts to be a writer second. Born and raised in the heart of the automotive world, only cars eclipse his love of gadgets. He previously wrote for Engadget and EngadgetHD before moving into the party house that is TechCrunch. He learned the retail side of... → Learn More

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012
bacon

RIM is keeping the PlayBook party going. While speaking at a BlackBerry World breakfast with RIM CEO Thorsten Heins stated the company plans to launch an LTE-enabled PlayBook by the end of the year. However, the CEO didn’t detail the projected release date, price or available wireless carrier.

This is a smart move for RIM. Rather than spending the time and resources producing another tablet, RIM is instead concentrating efforts on making sure upcoming software works on existing hardware. During a recent trip Rim’s Waterloo campus, the company made it clear to TechCrunch that it is very much committed to bringing BlackBerry 10 to the PlayBook.

The PlayBook has actually aged quite well. The computing hardware and screen is still competitive to current tablets on the market. BlackBerry 10 would likely make existing PlayBook owners very happy although by the time the OS hits later this year, companies and consumers might shy away from the older tablet. But as long as the 4G PlayBook isn’t tied to a two-year contract like other carrier-sold tablets, RIM might be able to sell several to those still addicted to their crackberrys.


Company Blackberry

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.

→ Learn more
Company: Blackberry
Launch Date: 1984
IPO: NASDAQ:BBRY

BlackBerry (formerly Research in Motion) is a Canadian designer, manufacturer and marketer of wireless devices and solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market. The company is best known as the developer of the BlackBerry smart phone. Blackberry technology also enables a broad array of third party developers and manufacturers to enhance their products and services with wireless connectivity to data. Blackberry was founded in 1984. Based in Waterloo, Ontario, the company has offices in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific....

→ Learn more