Blackberry gets into the tablet computer race

Research in Motion, the company behind the Blackberry, is still fighting Apple tooth and nail in the smartphone market – and it’s not planning to cede the tablet space to the company, either.  

The company today unveiled its Playbook tablet, a 7-inch 9.7mm-thick device that’s due early next year in the U.S., with plans for an international roll-out in the second quarter of 2011.

The PlayBook appears to be targeted squarely at the business audience. It comes with a special version of the Blackberry operating system that runs multitasking and offers video playback of 1080p (with HDMI out). 

Like the iPad, it comes with an e-Reader application and dual cameras for video conferencing. Unlike the iPad, it also supports Adobe’s Flash.

The system has a 1 Ghz dual-core CPU with 1 GB of RAM. It’s also able to tether directly with a Blackberry device via Bluetooth. It’s WiFi only right now, but RIM says it plans to ship 3G and 4G models in the future.

The biggest detail is, of course, the one that’s missing. RIM gave no heads up on what the PlayBook will be priced at.

A marketing video of the device in action can be found after the break.