RIM Expected to Unveil Black Pad Tablet on Monday

RIM is supposed to have a press meet on Monday at San Frascisco before the Developer’s meet. ZDnet reports that it seems to be that they are going to unveil Black pad Tablet on that day. Although, RIM is not talking anything about the launch. The Tablet is scheduled to release in the fourth quarter of this year. Wall Street Journal reported that the key features include seven-inch touch screen and one or two built-in cameras. The newspaper also reported that the device is going to have Bluetooth and broadband connections but will only be able to connect to cellular networks through a BlackBerry smartphone.

The report further says that RIM’s tablet will come with a new platform built by QNX software. The RIM tablet is being manufactured by Quanta Computer Inc. of Taiwan, and will run on chips from Santa Clara, Calif.-based Marvell Technology Group Inc.

The introduction of a tablet and new operating system is coming at a critical time for RIM, when BlackBerry phones are facing increasingly tough competition from iPhone as well as handsets that run on Google’s Android operating system. Research firm, Gartner Inc. reported, BlackBerry’s share of world-wide smartphone sales fell one percentage point to 18% in the second quarter of this year compared to the previous year even though the share of Android and Apple devices rose.