Release date and price of tablet PCs BlackBerry PlayBook in the U.S. and Canada have been made public. On April 19, the gadgets will hit the market and prices will depend on the model, said a statement by RIM on Tuesday.

The basic model of tablet, equipped with 16 GB internal memory and Wi-Fi, will sell for $ 499. Model with 32 GB and 64 GB memory will be priced at 599 and 699 dollars respectively. Models that support cellular networks will hit the market in the second half of 2011. On Tuesday RIM has started taking pre-orders for the Playbook, and it will be made available for retail on April 19.

The tablet is equipped with a seven-inch screen with 1024×600 pixel resolution, a dual-core processor running at 1 GHz, 1 GB RAM, video accelerator. In addition, the device has two cameras with resolution of 3 and 5 megapixels that can shoot HD-video (1080p), GPS, an accelerometer, a digital compass, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

RIM presented its tablet PC Playbook at Adobe MAX conference in 2010

As far as, success of Blackberry Playbook is concerned experts attribute conflicting forecasts to its market prospects, saying that RIM will be able to sell from 700,000 to eight million units this year.

According to Bloomberg, PlayBook running QNX OS will support Android-applications, which, according to analysts, can play an important role in lifting the sales of this tablet.

According to forecasts by the research firm iSuppli, around 57 million tablets will be sold this year, and Apple iPad will have the largest chunk of the market. Second-generation tablets from Apple were released in the United States on March 11 at prices starting from $ 499, and the company, according to analysts, has already sold anywhere from 500,000 to one million units.

Now, RIM has announced the release date and prices of Blackberry Playbook, it remains to be seen how successful the company will be by supporting android applications.