By: Hillel Fuld

The competition is heating up and the last numbers I read as recently as yesterday indicate that Apple has officially surpassed RIM in world smartphone market share. The mobile horizon is not what it was even a few months ago with Android devices popping up faster than you can name them, the iPhone and iPad selling like hot cakes, Windows Phone 7 getting some more than decent reviews, and Nokia trying its best at the touch screen game.

I said it before and I will say it again, I am not convinced that RIM did the right thing by abandoning the enterprise ship and beginning to blatantly target the same audience that Apple and Android is after. RIM’s new Torch, which by the way, seems like a very impressive device, offers a better multimedia experience, better browsing capabilities, and an enhanced camera, all things to target the consumer. I guess time will tell if RIM did what was best for their market share.

Putting the smartphone space aside, the tablet industry is in its infancy but any mobile entity that respects itself, better be throwing around the T word in one format or another and in RIM’s case, it is the much anticipated Playbook. When it was first announced, all we had a chance to see was the hardware, which looks nice but we all know that software is what matters nowadays.

The RIM CEO, Mike Lazaridis demoed the Playbook recently at the Adobe Max conference, which would explain his excitement to display Adobe Flash running on the tablet in the video below. I think that explains his excitement, I mean, can y0u think of any other reason he would be so eager to show Flash on a tablet? Any company you think he would be trying to stick it to?

Anyway, would love to hear your first impressions in the comments or on Twitter. Would you buy this device? What features would it take and can RIM create a serious iPad competitor?