RIM Prices Enterprise-Ready PlayBook Under $500

Research In Motion this week said it will begin offering its much-discussed PlayBook tablet PC for less than $500 and plans to target enterprise customers in the U.S. and Korea first.

As Enterprise Mobile Today reports, the 7-inch PlayBook tablet will support both Flash 10.1 and HTML5 as RIM hopes to capture some of the market Apple is ignoring by stubbornly refusing to support Adobe’s popular media player application.

By offering a 1 GHz dual-care Cortex A9 processor, 1 GB of RAM and a 1024 x 600 LCD display along with support for Flash 10.1 and HTML5 for under $500, RIM figures to make some inroads with enterprise customers who have increasingly shown a willingness to embrace new mobile devices in their organizations. The iPad with 32 GB of storage and Wi-Fi connectivity starts at $499 but escalates in price if it’s connected to a wireless carrier or adds additional storage.

In effort to give Apple and its iPad a run for its money, Research In Motion CEO Jim Balsillie today said his company’s PlayBook tablet PC will retail for less than $500, support Adobe Flash 10.1 and HTML5 and will hit U.S. store shelves sometime in the first quarter.

Balsillie, who talked up his company’s first foray into the tablet PC market in a Bloomberg report, also said South Korea will be among the first countries outside the U.S. where the 7-inch PlayBook will first be available.

Read the full story at Enterprise Mobile Today:


RIM Takes On Apple’s iPad With Sub-$500 PlayBook