Bloomberg has reported that RIM will start selling the 7″ BlackBerry Playbook in North America in Q1 2011 under US$500. That’s under RM1550 in our local currency today. According to RIM, the Playbook pricing is competitively priced against Apple’s iPad which starts from US$499. We can only hope that BlackBerry Malaysia will make it more affordable than the Galaxy Tab which retails at RM2699 for outright purchase.
It is too early to tell how well iPad’s real competitors will fare at the moment. The Samsung Galaxy Tab has just launched and the Playbook has yet to make an appearance. The new tablet rivals would also need to prepare themselves for a new iPad which is expected to offer newer features and a possible price reduction. So far the major differenciator for the tablet now are screen size & flash support. Looks like 2011 would be an interesting year for tablet wars.
