Research In Motion Ltd. (RIMM), the maker of the BlackBerry smartphone struggling to revive falling sales, rose 4.5 percent on speculation that activist investor Carl Icahn is buying a stake in the company. “This is a typical Carl Icahn scenario to come in and change,” said Sameet Kanade, an analyst at Northern Securities Inc. in Toronto who recommends investors sell the stock. “If he did this though, it would have to be on a hostile basis, given that the two co-CEOs own 11 percent of the stock.” RIM has plunged 61 percent on the Nasdaq this year after earnings missed analysts’ estimates on slumping demand. Stung by customer defections to Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPhone and handsets that run on Google Inc. (GOOG)’s Android platform, RIM’s share of the global smartphone market fell to 12 percent last quarter from 19 percent a year earlier, according to Gartner Inc.

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With the emergence of EHR/EMR this new device may be a very useful tool in a doctor's office.

Yesterday at Research In Motion's annual BlackBerry Developer Conference, CEO Mike Lazaridis announced the company's new tablet -- the PlayBook. The tablet will utilize an OS created by the recently acquired QNX (just as we'd heard previous to the announcement) called the BlackBerry Tablet OS which will offer full OpenGL and POSIX support alongside web standards such as HTML5 (which is all tied into RIM's new WebWorks SDK). Lazaridis was joined on stage by the company's founder, Dan Dodge, who said that "QNX is going to enable things that you have never seen before," and added that the PlayBook would be "an incredible gaming platform for publishers and the players." RIM also touted the PlayBook's ability to handle Flash content via Flash 10.1, as well as Adobe AIR apps. The new slate -- which Lazaridis described as "the first professional tablet" -- will sport a 7-inch, 1024 x 600, capacitive multitouch display, a Cortex A9-based, dual-core 1GHz CPU (the company calls it the "fastest tablet ever"), 1GB of RAM, and a 3 megapixel front-facing camera along with a 5 megapixel rear lens (and yes, there will be video conferencing). There was no mention of onboard storage capacity during the keynote, though the devices we just spied in our eyes-on post are labeled 16GB and 32GB on their back panels. The PlayBook will be capable of 1080p HD video, and comes equipped with an HDMI port as well as a microUSB jack, 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi, and Bluetooth 2.1. The device clocks in at a svelte 5.1- by 7.6-inches, is only 0.4-inches thick, and weighs just 400g (or about 0.9 pounds).  Read more about this from Engadget