If Research In Motion is getting into the tablet market to challenge Apple’s iPad and tablets running Google’s Android operating system, it could be the enterprise tablet some folks are waiting for.
RIM declined to comment on the Wall Street Journal report that said the company was “experimenting with a tablet device to serve as a larger-screen companion to its BlackBerry phone.”
That device, which the Journal said could come out by the end of the year, would connect to cellular networks via a BlackBerry phone.
Given the paucity of details and the refusal of RIM to comment to eWEEK, it is hard to say for certain what a RIM tablet might include.
But given that the iPad and Android tablets are running the same core OS’ used on existing smartphones it’s not a stretch to think the overhauled BlackBerry 6 might be the OS for a standalone RIM tablet.
Unveiled April 27 at RIM’s Wireless Enterprise Symposium, BlackBerry 6 features a WebKit rendering engine and HTML5 support to offers some of the functionality popularized by Apple’s iPhone and Android smartphones.
Multitouch functionality such as pinch-to-zoom browsing is just one of the many features users can expect when BlackBerry 6 appears on smartphones between July and September, said RIM Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis at WES.
Users swipe from one home screen to the next and drag and drop icons for the apps they like on a device’s home screen to make them readily accessible. In short, BlackBerry 6 follows the iPhone and Android into the modern mobile Web browsing era.
Industry analyst Jack Gold said that RIM needs to get this OS right before it launches any tablet.