Originally Posted by
Dick Applebaum 
The original iPhone was announced Jan 9, 2007 -- it included live demos, specs pricing and availability announcement,
The original iPhone was released, on schedule, Jun 29, 2007.
In the keynote, Steve said that Apple had been working on it for 2 1/2 years -- that means that work goes back to at least Jul 2004.
Recently, Steve said the original concept was for a Tablet -- but they decided, at some point, to do the iPhone first.
So, RIM has been unable to successfully copy the iPhone after 4 years of seeing a live demo -- unless they release something before Jan 9, 2011.
RIM acquired QNX in Apr 9, 2010 -- so we can assume that they recognized a need (for a smartphone OS) and began to look for a solution, say, Jul 2008.
The iPad was announced Jan 27, 2010 and began shipping Apr 3, 2010.
Since the iPad was a
revolutionary form factor for a Tablet -- it is reasonable to assume that
RIM, and others, could not have begun aan iPad knock-off design before Jan 27, 2010 or Apr 3, 2010.
We can assume, that RIM immediately repurposed their QNX purchase to work on the PlayBook (instead of a replacement for BlackBerry OS). But, because of a lack of apps, RIM chose to use AIR (Flash) and overpowered hardware to compensate for the RAM/Performance issues of Flash.
The PlayBook was announced on Sep 27, 2010 (but not shown) with partial specs and abstract videos (No Price, No Release Date, No Battery Specs, No Infrastructure).
The PlayBook was first demo'd on Oct 25, 2010 (No Price, No Release Date, No Battery Specs, No Infrastructure).
As of today, the PlayBook specs include: (No Price, No Release Date, No Battery Specs, No Infrastructure).
I believe that the earliest the PlayBook can be released in any reasonable quantity and stage of completion is Jul 2011 -- with minimal apps and infrastructure (hmm.. I almost typed
"infostructure" -- I kinda' like it!).
By that time we should expect that the iPad 2 will be released. I expect Feb 2011 Announce/Release for the iPad 2.
By mid 2011, there should be a plethora of knock-off
"also-rans" running Android, Windows 7, WebOS, WP7 to compete with the PlayBook for the scheissegeist of the tablet marketplace.
.