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BlackBerry fires salvo at Apple iPad

Even before it launches its PlayBook early next year, BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) on Tuesday formally joined the high-stakes battle with Apple for the new tablet market.

In an online video, the Canadian wireless giant further raised its war of words with Apple by showing how its PlayBook dwarfs the iPad for just about every application.

The PlayBook, which was unveiled in September, will hit the US market in the first quarter of next year and other markets later.

The 3-minute, 16-second video shows the PlayBook browser beating the iPad in speed by opening the same page much faster.

It shows the PlayBook browser not only loading pages much faster but also getting “richer content because of our support for (Adobe’s) Flash.”

The video demonstrates how the content downloaded by the PlayBook looked more ‘animated’ and ‘much richer’ compared to the “mundane, boring-looking’ content on the iPad.

According to it, the PlayBook browser also provides better and ‘pixel-perfect’ and ‘high-fidelity’ rendering of web sites.

In the final part, the online video shows how animation on the PlayBook is ‘very smooth, fluid, and doesn’t have any jumpiness’ compared to the iPad where it looks ‘choppy.’

The video is the second salvo fired by the BlackBerry maker at Apple after announcing last week that it will sell the PlayBook tablet for under $500 to undercut iPad sales which has sold millions of copies since its launch in April.

The Canadian iconic company is also flaunting the smaller size of its tablet which measures seven inches as compared to
the iPad’s display of 9.7 inches.

The war of words between the two giants began last month when Apple CEO Steve Jobs dismissed his Canadian rival after the iPhone overtook the BlackBerry in sales in the US and posted a 70-percent jump in its quarterly profits.

”We have now passed RIM, and I don’t see them catching up with us in the foreseeable feature. We are out to win this one,” Jobs said.

This forced RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie to retort, “ We think many customers are getting tired of being told what to think
by Apple.”