* BlackBerry maker announces tablet, more open development tools
BlackBerry maker Research in Motion is fiercely defending its dominance in the smart phone market and, in particular, the enterprise. The company has made a number of announcements at its developers’ conference in San Francisco this week, including a tablet computer and several enhancements to its development environment.
BlackBerry maker Research in Motion is fiercely defending its dominance in the smartphone market and, in particular, the enterprise. The company has made a number of announcements at its developers’ conference in San Francisco this week, including a tablet computer and several enhancements to its development environment.
Four things RIM PlayBook got right
RIM announced the PlayBook tablet computer, due to ship in early 2011, which runs the BlackBerry Tablet OS and is compatible out of the box with the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. RIM is leveraging its strong reputation as the most secure smartphone environment: When connected over Bluetooth, the smartphone content is viewable on the tablet, but the content actually remains stored on the BlackBerry smartphone and is only temporarily cached on the tablet (and subject to IT policy controls), according to RIM.
And the device’s OS is built upon the QNX Neutrino microkernel architecture, which RIM notes has long been field hardened and is being used in mission-critical applications in planes, trains, automobiles, medical equipment and core routers in the Internet.
The PlayBook supports an 802.11n-capable Wi-Fi connection and Bluetooth for syncing with BlackBerry handsets. Company documents say that “RIM intends to also offer 3G and 4G models in the future.”
RIM has also enhanced its development environment. Its newly announced WebWorks Web development environment will allow developers to build apps either in HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript for the BlackBerry 6 OS. BlackBerry Enterprise Application Middleware, also announced, is a complementary tool for developers to build applications that can tap into enterprise capabilities.
WebWorks, according to RIM, is intended to allow developers to create powerful apps with the look and feel of the native application, but within the BlackBerry environment.
