It has been announced by BlackBerry that the UK launch of the Playbook, their first tablet, will take place on June 16th. The tablet has a 7″ screen, Cortex A9 based dual 1 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM and dual cameras, 3 Meg front facing and 5 Meg rear . It does not use either Apple’s iOS or Google’s Android operating systems but instead has it own that was developed by QNX, who are also owned by RIM. It will come in three memory sizes 16Gb, 32 Gb and 64Gb and prices are expected to be £399, £479 and £559 respectively. The PlayBook will be available from Best Buy, Carphone Warehouse, Currys, Dixons, PC World and Phones4U.

The tablet market is getting very crowded and I cannot see this device being the fabled “iPad Killer”. I do believe it will be able to sustain a small share of the market though. The use of BlackBerry smartphones within the business sector may make it the tablet of choice for the enterprise market as long as they can get the right sort of apps. I do find the naming of the PlayBook interesting, BlacklBerry are renowned for their smartphones that are aimed primarily at a business market and yet this is called the PlayBook rather than the WorkBook. I think this shows that RIM are looking at trying to appeal to a wider market, when it was launched in the US RIM said that it was the perfect platform for playing games on. There are also enough BlackBerry fanboys out there who should see that the device survivies through to a second iteration.

Do you think you will be buying one?