The BlackBerry PlayBook is on its way out – as far as 7” tablets are concerned, the Google Nexus 7 is getting all the attention, after it stole the spotlight from the Amazon Kindle Fire. But a good deal is a good deal – the 64GB version of the PlayBook is currently going for £129 in the UK.
For comparison, a Nexus 7 8GB costs £159, while the 16GB one is £199. Somewhat amusingly, a 16GB PlayBook is £129 or even £169 in some places. Read more »
The ill-fated BlackBerry PlayBook recently got a new sibling in the form of the 4G LTE model that, apart from the data connectivity, also brought a faster 1.5GHz dual-core processor.
We reported back then that the tablet was supposed to go on sale in Canada sometime this month, and it has now hit retail. The 4G LTE BlackBerry PlayBook can now be purchased on Bell and Rogers in Canada for $350 and a three year contract. Read more »
The BlackBerry PlayBook never gained the popularity that RIM was hoping for and rumors of a bigger 10″ version fizzled out. Vietnamese blog Tinhte however, received photos of just that – a 10″ PlayBook – right next to a PlayBook 4G (Sprint had plans to offer these but then canceled).
Interested to see what could have been? There are a few more shots after the break. Read more »
The second in a line series of SDK releases for BB10 has been released, allowing developers to now upload apps to the BlackBerry 10 App World.
After a Dev App has been uploaded to App World, it is available for download to other developers, who can try it out on the BlackBerry developer alpha unit released by RIM a few months back. Read more »
Viber has finally made its way to the BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7 platforms, albeit in a beta form.
For now, BlackBerry and WP7 users will be able to only send text messages, share photos and their locations with anyone of their friends rocking Viber. Read more »
CrackBerry got hold of some RIM internal documents, which give us a better idea of the upcoming BlackBerry 10 OS. There’s a new motion-based lockscreen, video editor and shots of the screen-sharing in action.
The new OS looks and operates very much like the Swipe UI found on the MeeGo-running Nokia N9. Read more »
RIM fessed up to being behind the “Wake up!” campaign in front of an Australian Apple store and now the company is moving on to step two of its plan – a motivational (and subtly anti-Apple) message that alludes to a new BlackBerry Bold.
Found on the site WakeUpBeBold.com, it consists of a crawling text and narration (complete with an Australian accent) and the sound of footsteps. Read more »
When the video of the ‘Wake Up’ protest outside the Australian Apple Store hit the Internet, it was generally assumed that Samsung would be behind this, considering their track record of taking jabs at Apple. But later when asked about this, the company denied being behind it.
A few days ago, Mactalk‘s James Croft went through the source code of the Wake Up page and found clues that pointed towards RIM’s Australian website. The date that the website was counting down to was also speculated as the approximate release date for the BlackBerry 10. And lastly, the blogger who just happened to be there to shoot the video of the protest outside the Apple Store has previously worked for RIM. Read more »
Owning a BlackBerry Playbook just got a lot cooler, people. Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light – the latest installment of the video game adventure, has made its way to the BlackBerry App World.
The game is bound to offer hours of typical Tomb Raider gameplay – that is action, adventure and puzzle solving, taking place in exotic environments. Read more »
A few days ago, RIM’s Vice President of Developer Relations Alec Saunders said on Twitter that RIM will be removing the ability to sideload apps on to the BlackBerry PlayBook for consumers. This was mainly being done to combat piracy and in Saunders’ own words because they “don’t want to duplicate the chaotic cesspool of Android market.”
Now, however, RIM is going back on its previous statement, with Saunders this time taking to the company’s blog and elaborating on what he said earlier on Twiiter while basically contradicting himself in the process. Read more »
Depressing as that number is, it’s true. RIM’s new CEO, Thorsten Heins just revealed during his company’s fourth fiscal quarter earnings call that the company’s first attempt at a tablet ended up in the hands of just over a million people since being on sale for almost a year now.
This is of course the actual units sold and not the shipped figure that most companies tout. If you are looking for the number of shipments, then RIM says that it is just over 500,000 for the last quarter alone. Considering that’s half of the total units sold all last year, I’m guessing most of them are still sitting on shelves. Read more »
It is yet to be decided whether there will be a second PlayBook or not, but one thing is certain for the current generation – it will be updated with the BlackBerry 10 OS once the OS is out eventually.
RIM has still to reveal the first BB10-based smartphones this year and eventually release one of them until the end of 2012. Read more »
The analysts from IDC just published their report on the global tablet market in the last quarter of last year and it appears that the picture was pretty much what we saw throughout 2011. Android is improving rapidly, but Apple’s iOS is still the king of the hill, accounting for more than half of all sales.
Apple managed to ship 15.4 million units in Q4 of last year, which secured them a market share of 54.7% (down from 61.5% in Q3). The best performer of the quarter was obviously the Amazon Kindle Fire, which got a share of 16.8% even though it was only on sale for a month and a half. Read more »
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