Last week, South African celebrities were given a feel of the recently released Research In Motion (RIM) PlayBook tablet at an event held in Johannesburg to celebrate the upcoming South African release of the device.
However, while RIM says the PlayBook will hit local shores within the next few weeks, there is no clarity on when the tablet PC will be available in stores.
Vodacom's executive head of commercial business partners Nomsa Thusi says Vodacom expects the PlayBook in July, while Teddy Maduna, senior manager for device portfolio management at MTN, notes the PlayBook would be available in August.
RIM, which does not have a local distributor, would not confirm a release date or a recommended retail price for the PlayBook.
At the same time, none of the service providers contacted would confirm pre-orders for the PlayBook, whereas Thusi says Vodacom has not received any pre-orders. Jonathan Newman, chief strategy and marketing officer at Virgin Mobile SA, says Virgin is in negotiations with RIM about offering BlackBerry, which it does not do at present.
The RIM PlayBook was released in April following the unveiling of Apple's iPad 2. However, reports say RIM, which has priced the PlayBook to match the iPad, has struggled to win consumer fans since Apple's iPhone and a slew of devices running Google's Android entered the smartphone fray.
RIM says the professional-grade BlackBerry PlayBook and BlackBerry Tablet OS offer new possibilities for mobile computing.
“Perfect for either large organisations or an 'army of one', the BlackBerry PlayBook is designed to give users what they want, including Web browsing, multitasking and high performance multimedia.”
It also provides advanced security features, enterprise support and a development platform for IT departments and developers, it adds.
Measuring less than half-an-inch thick and weighing less than a pound, the BlackBerry PlayBook features a seven-inch high resolution display.
It has support for Adobe Flash Player 10.1, Adobe Mobile AIR and HTML-5 to provide Web as well as gaming experience.
For the BlackBerry PlayBook users who have a BlackBerry smartphone, it will also be possible to pair their tablet and smartphone using BlackBerry Bridge - a Bluetooth connection, the company states.
“This means they can opt to use the larger tablet display to seamlessly and securely view any of the e-mail, BBM [BlackBerry Messenger], calendar, tasks, documents and other content that resides on their smartphones.”
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