RIM has announced its entry into the tablet market -- or at least its intention to enter the tablet market early next year -- and as predicted, the BlackBerry PlayBook won't be so much a scaled-up smartphone as a stepbrother to the existing phone line. It will have an entirely new operating system (a version of the recently acquired QNX dubbed "Tablet OS") unrelated to the familiar but long-in-the-tooth BlackBerry OS.
The PlayBook's target audience of business consumers won't care much about the technical details -- but for the all-important developer community, the move is a disruptive one. It's also another nail in the coffin of Oracle's Java ME platform.
[ InfoWorld's Dori Smith shows you how to create mobile websites for iOS 4, Android, and WebOS. | Keep up on key mobile developments and insights with the Mobile Edge blog and Mobilize newsletter. ]
The operating system for BlackBerrys has become an anomaly of late; its app development platform has to this point faithfully stuck by Oracle's mobile Java platform, which has become increasingly sidelined in the world of modern smartphones. (The Android platform is based on a modified version of desktop Java, which avoids the need to pay licensing feeds to Oracle, one of the factors behind the Oracle-Google lawsuit.)
According to RIM's website, Tablet OS developers are currently slated to build apps in HTML5/CSS/JavaScript bundles or in Flash. "Add a new dimension to your BlackBerry development skills and create compelling applications for a new mobile form factor that complements your existing application" appears to be the euphemism that marketing cooked up for "you're going to have to learn a whole new set of development tools."
