Contrary to popular assumption, RIM's upcoming BlackPad tablet isn't going to be built around the company's BlackBerry 6 OS, but instead will run software from QNX, according to a Bloomberg report.

RIM acquired QNX back in April for $200 million. QNX's RTOS (realtime operating system) software is used in a variety of products from companies like Cisco, GE, and Caterpillar, as well as BMW audio systems and the Army's Crusher tank. By tapping into QNX's software, RIM believes it has a better chance of differentiating the BlackPad from Apple's iPad and the dozen or so other tablets due to arrive.

"The iPad is very much a device for consuming," said Alkesh Shah, an analyst at Evercore Partners Inc. in New York. "What's not out there is a tablet for creating, for production."

QNX's software has traditionally been used to control the music, media, and nav systems in automobiles, but has also been used in cardiac monitoring systems and even nuclear power plants. How exactly that will work out for RIM's upcoming tablet remains to be seen, but if nothing else, it's going to be different.

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We're starting to see a resurgence in planned Windows 7-based tablets, with the latest entry belonging to MSI. After putting on display its WindPad 100 tablet at Computex, the company has gone and released a bunch of press images into the wild, indicating that it's moved past the prototype stage.

In addition to Windows 7, the WindPad 100 struts into the tablet scene with a 10.1-inch display, Intel Atom Z530 processor, 2GB of RAM, and 32GB SSD. According to the press images, a dock will add two USB 2.0 ports, audio jacks, LAN, VGA, and an HDMI port.

Initially, MSI was talking up a $500 price point, but that was months ago and nothing has yet been made official.

More photos here.

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And thus it begins, the era of SMS viruses for Android. That's according to security firm Kaspersky, which earlier this week warned that the first malicious program classified as a Trojan-SMS has been detected for smartphones built around Google's Android platform.

"The new malicious program penetrates smartphones running Android in the guise of a harmless media player application," Kaspersky warns. "Users are prompted to install a file of just over 13KB with the standard Android extension .APK. Once installed on the phone, the Trojan uses the system to begin sending SMSs to premium rate numbers without the owner's knowledge or consent, resulting in money passing from a user's account to that of the cybercriminals."

Called Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.FakePlayer, Kaspersky says this bit of mischievous (and costly) code has already infected a number of mobile devices. That isn't surprising, considering that the Trojan-SMS category is the most widespread class of malware for mobile phones, Kaspersky claims.

More here.

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Not everything Google touches turns to gold (RIP Google Wave), but the search giant found its Midas touch with Android, the open source platform that's steamrolling through the mobile market. According to company CEO Eric Schmidt, Google thinks there are about 200,000 new Android devices being sold every day.

"People are finally beginning to figure out how successful Android is," Schimdt said at the inaugural Techonomy conference. "The number was about 100,000 [a day] about two months ago. It looks like Android is not just phenomenal but incredibly phenomenal in its growth rate. God knows how long that will continue."

Probably for a long time, and that's great if you have a vested interest in Google's success. While the open source platform itself is free, the more Android phones in the wild, the more people are using Google for Web searches, and that translates into cold, hard Google greenbacks.

"Trust me that revenue is large enough to pay for all of Android's activities and a whole bunch more," Schmidt gloated. "I should also say that we love the success of the iPhone because the iPhone uses Google's search and we get a chunk of that revenue when people search on the iPhone."

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