Report: RIM BlackBerry PlayBook Will Be Under $500

Research in Motion's BlackBerry PlayBook tablet will hit the U.S. market in the first quarter of 2011 and be priced under $500, an executive told Bloomberg this week.

"The product will be very competitively priced," RIM's co-chief executive Jim Balsillie told Bloomberg. He also said the PlayBook will help erode the Apple iPad dominance in the tablet space.

RIM might offer the PlayBook at retail stores like Target and Best Buy, as well as via wireless carriers. "Looking at both channels is the likely target," Balsillie said.

South Korea will likely be the second market in which RIM will launch the PlayBook, he added.

RIM announced the PlayBook in September. It is a 7-inch tablet with a 1024-by-600 multitouch capacitive display, designed around a dual-core, 1-GHz Cortex A9 microprocessor backed by a full gigabyte of RAM. The tablet will run QNX's mobile operating system, as well as HTML5 and Flash 10.1, with native hardware support to accelerate the apps further.

Since the unveiling, however, RIM has been silent on pricing and availability. A likely competitor in the space - the Samsung Galaxy Tab - will hit store shelves Wednesday via T-Mobile. Verizon will offer the Galaxy Tab as of November 11, and Sprint starts selling it November 14. AT&T and US Cellular will also sell the tablet, but release dates for those carriers have not yet been set. For more details, see PCMag's full review of Sprint's Galaxy Tab.

How does the PlayBook stack up? See PCMag's tablet comparison chart.

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Chloe Albanesius

Executive Editor, News

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I started out covering tech policy in DC for The National Journal, where my beat included state-level tech news and all the congressional hearings and FCC meetings I could handle. I later covered Wall Street trading tech before switching gears to consumer tech. I now lead PCMag's news coverage.

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Getting my start in DC means I still have a soft spot for tech policy; Congressional hearings can sometimes be as entertaining as a Bravo reality show, for better or worse. But PCMag is all about the technology we use every day, as well as keeping an eye out for the trends that will shape the industry in the years ahead (or flop on arrival). I've covered the rise of social media, the iOS vs. Android wars, the cord-cutting revolution that's now left us with hefty streaming bills, and the effort to stuff artificial intelligence into every product you could imagine. This job has taken me to CES in Vegas (one too many times), IFA in Berlin, and MWC in Barcelona. I also drove a Tesla 1,000 miles out west as part of our Best Mobile Networks project. Of late, my focus is on our hard-working team of reporters at PCMag, guiding and editing their robust coverage.

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