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More Blackberry Tablet Rumors

Posted by Zealot on Jul 11, 2010

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berry-tab Some hot new rumors about a possible Blackberry tablet have appeared this weekend giving new life to wild speculation.

According to Ashok Kumar, an analyst and managing director at Rodman & Renshaw, RIM is indeed working on a tablet. In fact, they are pushing hard to get it out this year and are planning on using a 1GHz chip in the device, possibly from longtime Blackberry favorite Marvell. Kumar says in his Friday research note…

Research In Motion (RIMM, Market Perform) is trying to pull forward the launch of the 7-inch touchscreen tablet from early next year to year end…with a marginal point of differentiation being the front- and back-facing cameras for videoconferencing.

While of course Kumar is saying this is due to a desire to compete with the iPad (analysts think EVERYTHING is due to the iPad/iPhone), looking at the rumored specs and considering the target market, I think any sense of urgency is due to the Cisco Cius, not the iPad. A Blackberry tablet would be going for the same business audience, and the dual cameras mean that teleconferencing would be a key focus…just like the Cius. When Cius came out of nowhere last week, I imagine a lot of alarms went off at RIM.

Of course, RIM has not said a word about these rumors, and has given no official indication they are working on a tablet AT ALL, so this is still a bit of “bloggers blogging about other bloggerss blogs”…and analysts are not much better than bloggers.

It is also worth noting that the original rumors from May about a Blackberry tablet (supposedly called a BlackPad) made clear that the device would be complementary…meaning you would need to tether it to a Blackberry. Therefore it is far more like the never released Palm Foleo or the Celio Redfly than it is an iPad…a device to expand phone functionality rather then a stand alone computer.

If it really is a complementary device, then I doubt the BlackPad (if real) will ever be released, and if it is, it will fail on an epic scale.

(Source: CNet)

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Zealot (839 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook


By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, HP Mini 311, iPod Touch 3G, iPad 16G or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Wil Wheaton!).

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    • http://www.svpocketpc.com Pony99CA

      If it really is a complimentary device, then I doubt the BlackPad (if real) will ever be released, and if it is, it will fail on an epic scale.

      I don't know about that conclusion.

      First, Celio supports the Redfly for BlackBerry, so they see a market for it.

      Second, a true tablet would likely cost more; a tethering device might cost less and still give most of the benefits of a real tablet if it could connect via Bluetooth (so you wouldn't need any wires between the BlackBerry and the BlackPad). Plus, if the BlackPad supported 3G, that would require two data plans, not just one (and possibly a tethering kicker), making the BlackPad even more expensive.

      Third, who do you think the customers for the BlackPad would be? I think they'd be customers who already support the BlackBerry infrastructure and thus have probably deployed BlackBerries to all the staff that they plan to already. Paying for a full-function tablet mignt not make sense if everybody already has the BlackBerry needed for a complementary deivce.

      Or maybe I'm completely wrong and BlackBerry wants to compete against the iPad. :D

      Steve

      P.S. I have edited the story to change “complimentary” to “complementary“. ;)

    • http://bardhaven.wordpress.com Zealot

      “P.S. I have edited the story to change “complimentary” to “complementary”. ;)”

      Well somebody has got to, God knows I'm not going to. Thanks Steve!

    • http://www.svpocketpc.com Pony99CA

      If it really is a complimentary device, then I doubt the BlackPad (if real) will ever be released, and if it is, it will fail on an epic scale.

      I don't know about that conclusion.

      First, Celio supports the Redfly for BlackBerry, so they see a market for it.

      Second, a true tablet would likely cost more; a tethering device might cost less and still give most of the benefits of a real tablet if it could connect via Bluetooth (so you wouldn't need any wires between the BlackBerry and the BlackPad). Plus, if the BlackPad supported 3G, that would require two data plans, not just one (and possibly a tethering kicker), making the BlackPad even more expensive.

      Third, who do you think the customers for the BlackPad would be? I think they'd be customers who already support the BlackBerry infrastructure and thus have probably deployed BlackBerries to all the staff that they plan to already. Paying for a full-function tablet mignt not make sense if everybody already has the BlackBerry needed for a complementary deivce.

      Or maybe I'm completely wrong and BlackBerry wants to compete against the iPad. :D

      Steve

      P.S. I have edited the story to change “complimentary” to “complementary“. ;)

    • http://bardhaven.wordpress.com Zealot

      “P.S. I have edited the story to change “complimentary” to “complementary”. ;)”

      Well somebody has got to, God knows I'm not going to. Thanks Steve!

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