Hasta La Gadget!

RIM dropped an intriguing hint about a likely release date for the BlackBerry PlayBook during its Q3 earnings call this week — namely, that the company expects the first revenue from the dual-core tablet to arrive in the first quarter of the company’s fiscal year. “There are no PlayBook revenues included in our Q4 guidance, and we expect the first revenue impact from PlayBook will be in RIM’s first quarter,” a RIM spokeswoman said, adding that the PlayBook is still slated to ship in the first quarter of the calendar year. If that still sounds like financial gibberish, let us clarify a tad — RIM’s first fiscal quarter doesn’t start till March, which happens to be when the first calendar quarter ends. Oh, RIM can certainly revise its guidance to shareholders and launch the BlackBerry PlayBook earlier or later if that’s what execs deem fit, but if both of RIM’s statements remain true, then March is when the PlayBook will ship. Isn’t logic wonderful?

BlackBerry PlayBook will ship in March, assuming inertial momentum originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Dec 2010 23:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This is not a joke, in fact it’s quite official. Research In Motion has just confirmed the acquisition of Swedish UI design company TAT, which will soon be “bringing their talent to the BlackBerry PlayBook and smartphone platforms.” You’ll be familiar with TAT as the team that helped polish the original Android interface on the T-Mobile G1 as well as from more recent UI design projects — the important thing is that these guys have shown they know what they’re doing. We have to admit, pairing the rock solid foundation of the QNX-built PlayBook OS with some top-level spit-shine from a company specializing in exactly that has us legitimately excited. Who knows, maybe we’ll even see a BlackBerry with a user interface that someone other than a BBMer could love.

[Thanks, Rasmus]

RIM buys TAT, BlackBerry UI in danger of becoming awesome originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Dec 2010 07:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s no secret that RIM doesn’t exactly agree with Steve Jobs’ characterization of the company’s prospects, and Jim Balsillie has some more to say on the Apple vs. RIM front, particularly where it comes to apps. It’s hard to imagine RIM catching up with Apple’s 300,000+ apps, but Jim doesn’t think that’s the point: “We believe that you can bring the mobile to the Web but you don’t need to go through some kind of control point of an SDK, and that’s the core part of our message.” The statement was made at the Web 2.0 Summit a couple days ago, and on further prompting Jim made it clear he rejects Apple’s “appification” of the web. RIM’s strategy is obviously riding on highly portable Adobe AIR apps and Flash support in the browser (much like Microsoft’s Silverlight app strategy for Windows Phone 7), and we look forward to seeing just how well that playbook plays out in the PlayBook. Of course, “there’s not an app for that, but our browser is fully capable of performing that functionality” isn’t quite so catchy…

RIM’s Jim Balsillie says ‘you don’t need an app for the web,’ rejects Apple’s appification of the internet originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Nov 2010 15:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jim Balsillie says BlackBerry PlayBook has a ‘module cavity,’ hints at NFC capabilities originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Nov 2010 15:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie finally gave us a crucial bit of information about the BlackBerry Playbook this morning: price, or at least a threshold. According to a Korean interview, Balsillie said that RIM’s 7-inch tablet will be “very competitively priced” with Bloomberg quoting the man saying that it will be “under” $500 when it hits North America in the first quarter of 2011, expanding globally in Q2. A price that should at least match the 9.7-inch WiFi-only iPad (16GB) and undercut the 7-inch 3G Galaxy Tab which goes on sale on Verizon tomorrow for $599.99. Thing is, by the time Q1 rolls around we’re going to be looking at many, many more viable tablet alternatives including a likely Apple refresh.

BlackBerry PlayBook to cost ‘under’ $500 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Nov 2010 01:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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