The ease of use, the intuitive way of jumping to the exact menu item automatically depending on your requirements, the ubuiquious multi-tasking capabilities and of course, push email, had made sure I never felt the pang of not being a part of the hip ``iPhone crowd``. Early this year, Apple came up with another market-defining product, the iPad, and again made every other mobile device manufacturers to scurry to their drawing boards for another touch-screen mayhem. And thus we get introduced to a couple more tablets -- Samsung Galaxy Tab, Modbook, Notion Ink Adam, HP Slate, Dell Streak, WePad, Lenovo IdeaPad U1 Hybrid, and the Blackberry Playbook. And all of these products run a myriad of operating systems in their hearts -- Mac OS X, Android, iOS 4, Windows etc. Recently, Samsung Galaxy Tab got launched amidst a huge fan fare, and is selling like hot cakes, at a price of Rs 38,000. Rumor has it that the RIM Playbook shall be available in the Indian market, soon, at a price of Rs 20,000 for the 16GB variant and around Rs 28,000 for the 64GB version. As it is evident, the pricing of the Playbook is very comparative with the iPad and the Galaxy Tab. What should be the deal breaker is the user experience that RIM manages to pack in, with the tablet. Of course, Apple is known to rule the roost in that department, but judging by the innovations RIM came up with Blackberry OS 6, and also the fact that they had acquired a whole new firm QNX Software Systems to create a tablet OS right from scratch, should give you an indication that RIM is damn serious in its efforts. If the rumor mills are to be believed, all the variants of Playbook are expected to have WiFi built-in, and a possibility to tether Blackberry Internet Services. The fact that Samsung Galaxy Tab runs Android on it, a OS that Google themselves claim to build specifically for mobile phones and not the tablets, should help RIM zoom ahead of the curve. All we can do, for now, is bide for the second quarter of 2011 when RIM is expected to launch the Playbook in India.
RIM Playbook to be priced at Rs 20,000 and Rs 28,000