Rumour: RIM to announce tactile tablet on Monday?

Research in Motion presented their financial results last week without mentioning the existence of a tactile tablet, although an announcement may be forthcoming during their developer’s conference next week.

While Research in Motion may have lifted spirits with the presentation of their latest financial results, allowing them to forget a range of issues encountered in August, a lot of market watchers were anticipating that the Blackberry Smartphone manufacturer would announce the release of their own tactile tablet, a subject on which numerous rumours have been circulating for months.

This wasn’t the case, although the group’s quarterly report did display that people shouldn’t write off the worlds second largest Smartphone manufacturer so quickly. The Wall Street Journal has now reported that an announcement about a tablet could be made next week, during their developer’s conference in San Francisco.


Still a lot of speculation
The name BlackPad continues to raise its head, even if another name (SurfBook) has started to circulate as a potential brand name of a future tablet. The device should come with a 7" display, perhaps two digital camera lenses (one on the back and the other on the front for video conferencing), WiFi and Bluetooth technology, but no 3G module as the devices connectivity will be made through a Blackberry Smartphone.

Still according to the Wall Street Journal, the Taiwanese Quanta Computer is in charge of production with some of the devices components being supplied by Marvell, a large supplier of Blackberry processors. Will we therefore see the new Marvell ARMADA family of processors, unveiled at the end of 2009, in the BlackPad tablet? There’s a pretty good chance this is the case.

Another mystery surrounds the OS which will power the system. The rumour that a specific OS created by QNX Software, a company purchased by RIM in 2008, remains current, with this information already announced in August. Between the announcements related to Blackberry OS 6, launched in August, and the possible launch of the BlackPad tablet, the developers conference from the 27 to 30th of September promises to be particularly interesting.