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WSJ says BlackBerry tablet could be announced as soon as next week
The Wall Street Journal is saying that RIM's now very close to being ready to show off this long-rumored tablet they've been cooking up -- and the public unveiling could come as early as next week when the company will be holding its Developer Conference in San Francisco. The QNX operating system rumor is apparently correct, as is the talk that the only means of connectivity will be WiFi and tethering through a BlackBerry; in other words, you won't need a dedicated service plan for the tablet and it won't be sold on contract (good call). The manufacturing wizards at Quanta are rumored to be on tap for manufacturing it with some sort of Marvell power under the hood, and even if the tablet ultimately fails Foleo-style, it could still be a huge launch: WSJ's sources are also saying that RIM will end up migrating all of its phones to QNX in the long term. As for the name? WSJ doesn't seem to know, though it does report that "BlackPad" is being thrown around internally; we're kind of partial to "SurfBook" ourselves, especially since "BlackPad" will make it tough to sell the thing in any color other than black. Seriously, who wants an orange BlackPad? Follow the break to sound off in the poll!
RIM files 'SurfBook' trademark in Canada, cyberspace awaits
It's pretty common for companies in the heat of product development to file for trademarks, domain names, and patents first and ask questions later, so we can understand (we guess) that RIM took the initiative to put the milquetoast "BlackPad" on lock earlier this year for the tablet it's almost certainly working on -- the logic, of course, is that if you fire enough shots in the dark, at least one of your filings isn't going to suck. To that end, it looks like the boys and girls in Waterloo filed for "SurfBook" in early August, though it's only showing up in Canada's filing system at this point -- there's no matching documentation in the USPTO just yet. Obviously, applying the word "surf" to anything electronic at this point evokes the pleasingly vintage phrase "surfing through cyberspace," which leads us to believe you'll probably be able to use the SurfPad to browse the World Wide Web and swap warez on your favorite BBS. Keep trying, RIM. No, wait -- definitely use SurfPad.
