Also, if this thing was 3G in addition to wifi, a lot of people would ditch their BBs in favour a PlayBook. As it is, I can't see this generation being a big hit. Kind of hope it is though.
Really? To me it reeks of "don't forget about us". They are telegraphing not because they are so confident in their punch but because they don't want people to forget they are in the fight.
It's not obvious to me that consumers interested in buying an iPad for back-to-school or during the holiday season will hold up their purchases to see what RIM actually ships and how much it costs.
Because these modern tablets are not scaled down PC's, they are scaled up phones.
I think this is where we're going to see companies OS decisions come into play in the next few years; iOS is (very loosely) a subset of OSX, but with a phone UI. There's loads of potential here for it to grow. I don't know much about Android, but I think it's similar.
In martial arts they have this thing they call "telegraphing" a blow, where you unwittingly give your opponent plenty of notice of what's coming so that they can be ready to counter it.
Obviously RIM is so confident of their manufacturing and marketing prowess that they don't mind giving Apple 3-6 months notice of what they plan to ship.
On another subject, why is RIM even in this business? Are Apple iPads taking market share away from Blackberrys? Is iPad some kind of a threat to RIM? I would have guessed that RIM would be pouring all of its efforts into defending its corporate phone turf, not thinning their forces by launching new devices.