As Research In Motion set up its PlayBook on Thursday even , Cisco Systems was already accept fiat for its Cius enterprise lozenge and ship it to some customers .
Cisco order in ablog postlast week that its direct sales representatives and communication channel partners begin accepting orders for the Cius on March 31 . Through the end of May , the company is delivering the devices to “ primal customer accounts we ’ve identified with unparalleled use cases , ” spokeswoman Molly Ford said in an e - postal service audience . These companies will post out scaled production deployment of the Cius , according to Cisco .
However , the Cius wo n’t be generally useable until May 31 , Ford enounce . That is two months beyond the prognosis Cisco gave at the Cius announcement last June , whenit said the production would be generally useable in the first quarter of this class . However , given the current turbulence at Cisco , a delay is not surprising . Last hebdomad , CEO John Chamberscalled on the company to take dramatic steps to refocus itself , and the hereafter of its consumer - facing businessesis now in doubt .
Though it may end up being compared with the Apple iPad 2 in some enterprise , the Cius is not intended to go up against that equipment or any other consumer pad of paper . Cisco is aiming the product at business coaction , with the ability to interoperate with the company ’s TelePresence videoconferencing organisation , the Cisco Quad and Cisco Show social - networking platforms , and the company ’s WebEx on-line meeting system . The Cius , which is found on the Android 2.2 operating system , is also designed to move business covering .
The Cius has a 7 - column inch screen and a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor . It will come in initially with Wi - Fi and cellular connectivity , Cisco has tell . The company claims about eight time of day of battery life . Verizon Wireless articulate in January that it would start out sell the Cius for utilisation on its 4 gigabyte LTE ( Long - Term Evolution ) internet in the spring and would be the first carrier to offer the tablet .
RIM ’s PlayBook is jell to go on sales event April 19 . Like the Cius , it is targeted at enterprises rather than consumers , though the PlayBook will be sold at Best Buy store . Like the Cius , it also did n’t quite take on a first - after part shipping prognosis . But the PlayBook has generated more controversy than the Cius , despite — or because of — RIM ’s nomadic inheritance . The company ’s tablethas been pick apart most for not allowing memory access to BlackBerry e - mailwithout a tethered BlackBerry French telephone .
