The good news here is that assuming things go according to plan and nothing changes — the BlackBerry PlayBook should be available fairly soon. Well, sooner for those in the US market anyway, but more in the European release later in the post. The details are coming by way of Steven Bates who confirmed that “it’s end of Q1 for the US.” In other words, the PlayBook should be available sooner rather than later. As in sometime this month, or just a few weeks from now.
Moving past the US release for a moment and Bates noted that they were going to stagger things because that is how they did it for the Torch and it “worked quite nicely.” In terms of the European release, that was noted for Q2, which means anywhere from a day to three months after the US market gets their hands on the device. Otherwise, further breakdown of the European release made mention that the UK would be “one of the early ones.” Given that it sounds like the European release cycle will see different markets getting the tablet at different times throughout the quarter.
Bottom line, the April 10th rumor seems to have been just that — a rumor. And given that, maybe there is something to this pre-order that we saw pop-up recently with MobileCity. After all, if the PlayBook is really going to launch as expected this month, we may end up seeing a few more pre-orders, or at the very least, product listings fairly soon.
