My colleague Tim Conneally over at Betanews has a scoop that has seen a bit of play in the tech media over this past weekend: the BlackBerry Tablet is indeed real. While there have been a few stories that quote a research report by Rodman & Renshaw analyst Ashok Kumar, this is the first one I’ve seen that appparently sources somebody from within the company.

The device will have a 7-inch screen and run on a 1GHz processor, and include a front and back facing camera for video-conferencing. Tim adds that his source also says RIM plans to add Flash support to the device, complete with a hardware-based Flash accelerator. If true, it certainly would be interesting to see how Apple responds, given it has been so adamantly against Flash.

No further details have been given about any possible date of launch, but speculation is that it would be released during the holiday season. “Seasonal buying has done wonders for devices like the Motorola Droid which launched during last year’s holiday season and went on to become the best-selling Android phone to date,” Tim writes.

I’m not sure what to make of any potential BlackBerry-powered tablet, or venture a guess on how well it might do. But I think it would probably be a worthy alternative to the iPad for enterprise environments that already employ RIM’s line of smartphones.

 
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Read more: RIM BlackBerry, Tablet PCs