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At the BlackBerry Developers Conference today, RIM announced its first tablet, called the BlackBerry PlayBook, as well as new initiatives designed to make BlackBerry development easier and more profitable. As previously reported elsewhere, the tablet will run on QNX, a UNIX-like operating system RIM acquired earlier this year. Notably, RIM will support the "full web" - including Flash - on the tablet as well Adobe's AIR platform for cross-platform applications. Enterprises seeking to avoid the consumerization of IT and those interested in developing across platforms will both welcome these announcements.

Today at the RIM (Research in Motion) developer conference, the BlackBerry makers introduced a new member to it's family - the BlackBerry PlayBook. The PlayBook is a 7-inch "professional" touch screen tablet device which features a 1024x600 display, multi-touch gestures and a 1 GHz dual-core processor. One of the more interesting features, for fans of augmented reality (AR) at least, is the device's pair of front- and rear-facing cameras, both of which can shoot HD video.

Blackberry maker RIM has seen its market share rapidly decline in recent months, at least that's what analysts have been saying. But according to new data from Statcounter (by way of Royal Pingdom), Blackberry is growing just as fast as Android in terms of Web usage. In fact, Blackberry users have doubled their Web presence over the course of the past year.

Earlier this summer we told you about Bitbop, a mobile TV subscription service that launched exclusively on BlackBerry devices. At that time, it seemed intriguing that BlackBerry phones would be the target market for mobile TV viewing, especially when other mobile platforms now offer Netflix and Hulu. The FOX-owned company may have taken a significant step forward today as it has announced the service is now available on Android devices.

RIM, the company behind Blackberry smartphones, is getting into the smart billboard business, according to two patent applications it filed recently. But what would a smartphone maker and roadside advertising have in common? It could be a new way to serve up "adaptive" advertising according to data gathered from nearby Blackberry users.

According to mobile-focused blog Unwired View, the innovation comes in the form of using nearby phones to measure traffic speed and density and then adapting a billboard's content accordingly.

It's no secret that RIM is in trouble on Wall Street as it loses out in the consumer market to Android vendors and Apple. But what about RIM's core competency, the enterprise? We've been covering the rapid adoption of Android and especially iOS in the enterprise, and the availability of device management alternatives to the BlackBerry Enterprise Manager. Is RIM in danger of losing business customers as well as consumers? We think so, but have a few ideas on what RIM can do to keep its competitive edge.

The Android platform has garnered much attention lately because of its rapidly expanding number of apps and phones on the market, so additional growth statistics should come at no surprise. Mobile Web usage on Android devices in the U.S. quadrupled in the second quarter of 2010, stealing market share from Apple and BlackBerry devices, says U.K. mobile analytics firm Bango. Apple's traffic grew just 13% causing it's share of the mobile browsing market to fall 16%, and BlackBerry saw its similarly slow growth outpaced by Android devices.

Today CNET reports that the European Commission has selected iPhones and HTC phones over BlackBerrys, striking another blow to Reasearch in Motion. This follows Saudi Arabia announcing it will ban BlackBerry service starting Friday. The United Arab Emirates and other countries are threatening to ban BlackBerry services as well.

The EC cited a few criteria for its selection, but this stands out: "openness toward other applications and future technologies."

After months of speculation, Research in Motion has official announced the BlackBerry Torch 9800 will be available on August 12. There are no surprises in the announcement, as the BlackBerry OS6 based slider has been extensively covered in the run-up to the announcement. The phone is expected to compete with the iPhone, but other than a physical keyboard and BlackBerry Enterprise Server support, this AT&T exclusive phone offers little to compete with the iPhone, which is cutting into RIM's enterprise market share.

MobileCrunch reports that Research in Motion has purchased the domain name blackpad.com, fueling speculation that RIM's long rumored enterprise tablet will be called the BlackPad. Others suggest it is merely a codename. One commenter at MobileCrunch notes the domain name was on sale at BuyDomains for $1,788. The domain blackpad.com doesn't revolve to any address at this time.

Meanwhile, Reuters reports that RIM is likely to announce the launch of the BlackBerry Torch 9800, a device RIM hopes will compete with the iPhone, at an event with AT&T on Tuesday New York City.