As with the iPhone the iPad seems to be leading a revolution. All of the major phone and computer manufacturers appear to be interested in bringing out their own tablets with some available now and some announced as "coming soon".

Bridging the gap between a mobile phone and a laptop the tablet would appear to have little appeal to business users, outside of a few niche markets. That might be about to change now as RIM, the company behind BlackBerry, announce their PlayBook will be available in 2011, squarely aimed at business users.

As with BlackBerry mobile phones the new PlayBook will run on its own operating system specifically developed for tablet computing, BlackBerry Tablet OS. This is especially web friendly and supports both Adobe’s newest Flash standard, as well as HTML5. This is in contrast to the iPads lack of Flash support, which is one of its main drawbacks.

Where Apple lead the way by a considerable margin is in the apps department. There are so many already available that it will be near impossible for others to ever catch up. However RIM are making it as easy as possible for developers to create new apps for their new OS and to port across existing apps.

Business focussed apps would be a differential for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, particularly if there are large enough numbers produced.

Whilst only a prototype model has yet been seen by anyone outside of RIM they already have a full spec for the finished product, some of which includes:

• 7 inch 1024 x 600 multi-touch screen
• 1GHz dual-core CPU and 1GB of RAM
• Two cameras (front and back) with HD video and video calling
• Ability to connect to BlackBerry smartphone

Expected release date for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet is thought to be Q1 2011 for the US market with the UK getting them in Q2.