Our readers who live north of the border will be the first to get their hands on Research In Motion's (RIM's) upcoming 4G LTE BlackBerry PlayBook tablet when it launches in Canada on August 9, 2012, RIM announced today. Customers living in the U.S., Europe, South Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean will have access to the updated device "in the coming months," though no specific time frame was given.
Blackberry has seen its fortunes fade pretty rapidly over the last couple of years, but despite the trends pointing in the wrong direction, they still have millions of users around the world. Netflix rarely misses an opportunity to serve its content to such a large user base, however Blackberry users have always been left out in the cold, and according to Netflix support, that isn’t likely to 
We're seriously starting to question the intelligence level of tablet makers, or at least their ability to predict consumer reactions to price cuts. Exhibit A is Hewlett-Packard's $99 TouchPad fire sale. HP's goal was to clear out existing inventory, and it did, but not before owning the world's most popular tablet, and arguably the hottest tech item around. What did Research In Motion learn from this?
Research In Motion can't seem to get a grip on this whole tablet thing, figuratively or literally. Playing out like an episode of The Sopranos, thieves hijacked a truck carrying 22 pallets of BlackBerry PlayBooks from an Indiana truck stop while the driver was using the local facilities to shower and grab a bite to eat. It's estimated the truck was carrying 5,000 PlayBook devices worth around $1.7 million.
Research In Motion grossly underestimated what a big deal it would be to release a tablet with what some consider critical missing features, namely native email, calendar, and contacts support. The PlayBook was met with mixed reviews; some were willing to overlook the PlayBook's failings, others decided not to pull any punches in their criticisms. Give RIM credit though, the powers in charge stuck it out, and regarding that fire sale over Black Friday, it appears to be a sign of things to come rather than a declaration that RIM wants out.
As Black Friday approached, several retailers including Best Buy lowered the price of the much-maligned BlackBerry Playbook. After selling an undisclosed number of the device, Best buy has taken to cancelling orders. By some accounts, all outstanding online orders have been cancelled, and the device is no longer listed on the Best Buy site. Did we just see the PlayBook fire-sale?
Before you go and drop a couple of Benjamins on a Kindle Fire from Amazon or $250 on a Nook Tablet from Barnes & Noble, there's something you should know. Research In Motion is slashing the price of its BlackBerry PlayBook to $199 at Best Buy, Staples, and a bunch of other popular retailers, putting it in direct competition with the two aforementioned tablets.
Research In Motion wants to make it clear that it intends to keep supporting and developing Adobe Flash for its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, even though Adobe itself is abandoning Flash on the mobile Web in order to "aggressively contribute to HTML5." Dan Dodge, President and CEO of RIM's QNX operations, announced RIM's continued commitment to Flash in a blog post.
Thanks to the difficulties that RIM is having with getting BBM to work with the Playbook’s QNX powered operating system, the launch of Playbook 2.0 has been delayed until February, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the benefits of rocking a few Android applications on your Playbook right now. Thanks to the clever coding efforts of a number of Blackberry enthusiasts, a little elbow grease, and some patience, you’ll end up with a RIM-built tablet that’s not only functional (finally), but also down right enjoyable to use. 
Are you a BlackBerry PlayBook owner that’s frustrated by the lack of integrated email, contact and calendar apps? You aren’t the only one. Those are the number one complaints leveled against the device – or at least the complaints cited most often – but RIM said that it would push out an update in October that would add those clamored-for features. Well, it’s almost November already. Where’s that update? Turns out the timetable was a bit off. Today, RIM announced that the update won’t roll out until next February.
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