RIM Said to Ready Business-Friendly Tablet

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that BlackBerry manufacturer Research In Motion will unveil a tablet computer and operating system next week.

According to the article, which cited "people familiar with RIM's plans":

It will feature a seven-inch touch screen and one or two built-in cameras, they said.

It will have Bluetooth and broadband connections but will only be able to connect to cellular networks through a BlackBerry smartphone, these people said. Since the tablet won't be sold with a cellular service, it's not clear which carriers or retailers will sell the device.

Some insurance CIOs I talked to at last week's CSC Future Focus conference - including Builders Mutual's Graeme Boddy - expressed a desire to leverage tablet computers in their organizations. The biggest sticking point? Lack of camera on the most viable tablet computer to date, the iPad.

RIM executives were at that conference - I shared a table on mobility strategies with them - and they were generally tight-lipped about the company's plans. But they did seem to indicate that RIM saw the business tablet market as one that the company was looking to explore. A device with the features outlined above, along RIM's reputation as a business-friendly manufacturer, holds promise for the introduction of tablet computing to the enterprise, PC World notes.

We'll see what next week holds on this front. There certainly are a number of unanswered questions and potential issues (requiring tethering to a BlackBerry as the only way to access cellular data networks chief among them). However, the irony of RIM potentially changing the tablet game by introducing multiple cameras, in the way Apple changed the smartphone game by fully leveraging a touch screen, is notable. One wonders how the consumer tablet market will be affected - and how receptive businesses across industries will be to the tablet paradigm.

Nathan Golia is senior editor of Insurance & Technology. He joined the publication in 2010 as associate editor and covers all aspects of the nexus between insurance and information technology, including mobility, distribution, core systems, customer interaction, and risk ... View Full Bio