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The tablet wars is set to heat up. BlackBerry maker Research In Motion may announce its tablet next week at the company’s developer conference, which starts Monday in San Francisco, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

RIM has already trademarked ‘BlackPad’ and ‘SurfBook’ and it is likely that the new tablet from the company could carry one of these names.

Last month, Chinese language paper Apple Daily reported that RIM has chosen Taiwanese notebook manufacturer Quanta to produce at least two million tablets this year. RIM and Quanta were said to be targeting a $500 price tag for the BlackPad to make it competitive against Apples iPad.

RIM’s new tablet announcement, if it happens next week, will come just weeks after the debut of the Samsung’s 7-inch tablet called the Galaxy Tab.

Since Apple introduced the iPad in April, tablets have made a big comeback and become of the hottest consumer gadgets of the year. Apple has sold more than 3 million iPads. In June, Dell launched the Streak, a tablet with a 5-inch screen. Samsung has already said its tablet will be available on all the four major U.S. carriers — AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile–but hasn’t announced exact pricing or availability.

BlackBerry’s new tablet will be different from its peers. It will support Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 3G connectivity but through tethering the device to a Blackberry smartphone. Essentially, the tablet has been designed as a “companion” to the phone, according to earlier reports.

The BlackBerry tablet would likely have a 7-inch screen and run a new operating system designed by QNX Software, a company that RIM acquired earlier this year, says the Journal.

RIM has been trying to go beyond its core audience of business users and attract more consumers, especially with the launch of devices such as the recent touchscreen phone Torch. A BlackBerry tablet seems like yet another step in that direction.

Photo: (Sean Hobson/Flickr)

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Samsung is milking the launch of its 7-inch tablet called the Galaxy Tab by trickling out a little bit of news about it every other week. After announcing the Galaxy Tab’s launch in Europe earlier this month, Samsung held a press conference Thursday to say the device will be available in the U.S in the next few weeks.

The Galaxy Tab will be available on all the four major wireless service providers — AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile. There’s still no word on pricing or exact shipping date for the Galaxy Tab. The devices, which support 3G and WiFi, will arrive in time for the holiday shopping season, says Samsung. A Wi-Fi only version of the tablet will be available in the future.

The Galaxy Tab runs Android 2.2 Froyo operating system and has a LCD display with a 1024 x 600 resolution. At 0.8 pounds, the device weighs just about half as much as the iPad. It also supports Adobes Flash Player 10.1 so it can display web pages that run Flash something the iPad cant. The Galaxy Tab will run many Android Market apps in full screen and those that are not scalable will be framed and centered on the screen at 800 x 400 resolution.

Another feature that U.S. customers of Galaxy Tab will get is the Media Hub, a mobile widget that will allow users to download and rent movies.

The Galaxy Tab will come with three accessories: a $100 keyboard dock, a $50 desktop dock, which will double as a charger, and a $100 car and GPS dock.

Photo: Samsung

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Happy news for iPhone- and iPad-using fans of the $10 standard flavor of office/productivity suite Documents To Go: Yesterday, version 4.0 was released for iOS. The $15 Documents To Go Premium hit 4.0 last week.

These were the first updates of the application following Blackberry-maker RIM’s partial acquisition of Documents To Go creators DataViz. RIM had announced that it had reassigned the majority of the company’s employees to developing applications for Blackberry smartphones and the Blackpad tablet; this had cast some doubt on future updates of Documents to Go for other platforms.

Still, this may be the last major update Documents To Go will see for iOS. We can assume that 4.0 was mostly in the can when RIM bought DataViz’s assets early this month. If RIM does indeed let multi-platform development of Documents To Go slide, that creates an opening for many would-be/could-be competitors — including Microsoft Office.

DataViz keeps Documents To Go updates coming [MacWorld]

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Windows Phone 7 Office Image via Microsoft.

Traditionally, Microsoft has been a software company, leveraging its office suites and operating systems, but selling applications for any compatible hardware and platform. For smartphones in particular, its strategy has been to supply the software and let other companies worry about developing the phones. So why not go all the way and sell its software for every device on every platform?

That’s what Business Insider’s Dan Frommer proposes the company do: “Microsoft should develop Office apps for the iPad, Android, Chrome OS, BlackBerry tablet, and any other computing platform that is likely to become popular over the next 5-10 years,” adding that “if Microsoft wants to keep people tied into its Office suite, it needs to go where the people are going.”

Office is integrated into the forthcoming Windows Phone 7 OS, but would compete on several fronts in smartphone and tablet platforms, including iWork on Apple’s iPad, Google Docs on the mobile web, and Dataviz’s multi-platform Documents To Go, just acquired by Blackberry maker RIM.

Frommer sees RIM’s purchase of Documents To Go as a defense against the possibility of Microsoft introducing an Office app for Blackberry. Ironically, if RIM stops active development of Documents To Go for other platforms, that could create just the multi-platform opening needed to entice Microsoft to swoop in.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Image from DataViz.com.

With its flagship mobile office suite Documents To Go, software company DataViz makes some of the most popular productivity applications for Blackberry, iPhone, iPad, Windows, Mobile, and Android. Now that RIM has bought the better chunk of DataViz to work for Blackberry, its days as a cross-platform mobile superstar might be numbered.

The deal had been reported as done on Friday by Crackberry.com, reportedly for $50m in cash, shortly after DataViz had announced that they were cancelling development for Palm. RIM confirmed the acquisition yesterday in a statement: “RIM has acquired some of the assets of DataViz and hired the majority of its employees to focus on supporting the BlackBerry platform.” Translation: it’s all ours, now.

Even if RIM just lets its client apps for other platforms drift along for a while, they’re still a good business: as CNET’s Jessica Dolcourt points out, “fifteen dollars a pop for iPhone business professionals buying Documents To Go for iPhone isn’t a business to quickly pull from.”

Still, having Documents To Go in-house offers RIM terrific leverage. They can use its InTact cloud-syncing software for all media files on the Blackberry; offer the premium version for free to enterprise customers; and package a new suite of productivity and enterprise apps for its forthcoming BlackPad tablet. By buying Documents To Go and its software team from DataViz, RIM just solidified its position as the “serious” and “productive” smartphone company.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews