Rim, Tablet Computer | featured news

Research In Motion chose its home country to launch a PlayBook tablet with built-in support for cellular networks, a crucial feature that its initial models lacked.

Does $199 sound like too much for the BlackBerry Playbook this holiday season? RIM seems to think so, but only for its employees. According to multiple sources, the 16GB 7-inch tablet is now available to RIM employees through a special corporate portal for $99. The 32GB version is $149 and the 64GB model for $199. We have also been told that employees can only order up to eight models.

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. unveiled a new operating system Tuesday in hopes of grabbing some attention away from the iPhone and Android phones.

In each of the last three quarters the company has missed its own revenues expectations. RIM’s situation now resembles the struggles that Nokia faces as both have failed to mount any credible challenge to the dominance of Apple and Google in the smartphone and tablet markets.

Sprint Nextel abandoned plans to sell a 4G version of the BlackBerry's PlayBook, meaning the 4G tablet currently isn't supported by any of the three largest U.S. wireless carriers.

Research in Motion announced last week that cost cutting efforts will include layoffs following a sluggish start to the year and continued new product delays. Shares sold off sharply as investors bailed on lowered guidance and delayed new Blackberry launch.

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion recalled about 1,000 of its PlayBook tablets that were shipped with faulty operating systems, which may have prevented users from performing the device's initial setup.

Research In Motion's PlayBook went on sale in the United States and Canada on Tuesday in a launch the company hopes will win customers away from Apple's dominant iPad tablet computer.

Despite a cluster of middling reviews and the still-in-the air whiff of a media interview gone terribly wrong, the mood at last night's RIM BlackBerry PlayBook launch was upbeat—at least on the surface.

Apple will remain firmly in control of the tablet market through 2015, according to market research by Gartner, which also shows Google’s Android will take the baton from Nokia’s Symbian to dominate the smartphone market through the same time period. Experts agree, though, that it will be strong ecosystems, allowing for tablets and smartphones to deliver a combined experience, which will take the day, possibly weakening Research in Motion’s capacity to deliver in a new environment.