Well, here is what we have confirmed: the keynote today, delivered by Mike Lazaridis, will focus on the next generation tablet OS platform. It won’t focus or really feature any hardware, unfortunately. Our source said it would be unlikely for RIM to announce the mysterious tablet device during a developer event. We agree. Is it possible there will be a shot of hardware on a slide during the presentation, or even a non-working device somewhere? It’s possible, but again, this will be about the platform, the developers, and software. Don’t count on a device announcement/availability.
Separately: we have heard the tablet OS is a pretty long way away from being completed. Also, the QNX-based OS that is rumored to extend to the traditional BlackBerry lineup is barely even started at this point; since internally it’s not confirmed that it will in fact power BlackBerry smartphones. We have also been told porting all of RIMs advancements like battery optimization, email compression, BES integration, etc. is a very tedious process.
