Another day, another round of news and rumours out of Waterloo, Ont.-based Research in Motion. Unlike most days though, today’s not all doom and gloom for RIM today.
In fact, Mobile Syrup has good news for fans of RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. If there are any PlayBook fans out there, that is. Firstly, RIM has confirmed that the 4G LTE-enabled version of its PlayBook tablet will be available in Canada on August 9th. So that’s something to look forward to. And in preparation for the launch, Best Buy is marking down the WiFi-only PlayBook model by a further $20, beginning Friday. So some deals to be had, even if the long-term future of the platform remains somewhat murky.
But I did say it wasn’t all good, didn’t I? On that front, a report from Canadian Press quotes high-level sources saying RIM will close its few company-owned retail stores and reveal the details of 3,000 job cuts as part of its previously announced restructuring plan shortly. Let me digress to mention I didn’t know RIM had retail stores, which may be indicative of why they apparently weren’t overly successful. Apparently the last storefront is in Michigan (maybe that explains it) and another nine are in airports (who buys a phone at the airport?). Anyway, next Monday is identified as d-day on the job cuts.