Rim, Blackberry Playbook | 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.

RIM delays an update to its PlayBook tablet computer's system software until February 2012.

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.

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.

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.

Research In Motion Ltd. says its tablet computer, the BlackBerry PlayBook, will start selling in the U.S. and Canada on April 19 for $499 to $699.