miércoles, 22 de septiembre de 2010

RIM Readies Its Answer to iPad. The Black Pad

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704129204575506160515163820.html
 By PHRED DVORAK And TING-I TSAI

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. could unveil its new tablet computer—as well as the operating system that will power it—as early as next week at a developers' conference in San Francisco, said people familiar with RIM's plans.
[RIMTAB]
The tablet, which some inside RIM are calling the BlackPad, is scheduled for release in the fourth quarter of this year, these people said. It will feature a seven-inch touch screen and one or two built-in cameras, they said.
It will have Bluetooth and broadband connections but will only be able to connect to cellular networks through a BlackBerry smartphone, these people said. Since the tablet won't be sold with a cellular service, it's not clear which carriers or retailers will sell the device.

In a significant development, RIM's tablet will eschew the recently revamped BlackBerry 6 operating system in favor of a completely new platform built by QNX Software Systems, these people said.
RIM bought QNX, a maker of operating systems used in everything from cars to nuclear reactors, earlier this year, in what industry watchers said was a bid to replace software criticized as slow and buggy.

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RIM eventually plans to transition its BlackBerry smartphones to the QNX operating system as well, people familiar with RIM's strategy said.
The RIM tablet is being manufactured by Quanta Computer Inc. of Taiwan, and will run on chips from Santa Clara, Calif.-based Marvell Technology Group Inc., according to people familiar with the tablet's manufacturing.
RIM said it doesn't comment on rumors or speculation.
BlackBerry maker RIM could unveil a new tablet computer as early as next week. The introduction of a tablet and new operating system comes at a critical time for RIM, whose phones are facing increasingly tough competition from the iPhone. WSJ's Drew Dowell and Spencer Ante discuss on Digits.
A Quanta spokeswoman said the company is developing tablets for clients but declined to comment on whether RIM is one of them. Executives at Marvell, which already supplies chips for RIM smartphones, said the company has developed a new series for tablets but declined to say whether they are supplying an upcoming tablet for RIM.
The introduction of a tablet and new operating system come at a critical time for RIM, whose BlackBerry phones are facing increasingly tough competition from Apple Inc.'s iPhone as well as handsets that run on Google Inc.'s Android operating system. Research firm Gartner Inc. estimated BlackBerry's share of world-wide smartphone sales fell one percentage point to 18% in the second quarter of this year versus the previous year—even as the share of Android and Apple devices rose.