The anticipated BlackBerry PlayBook will sell for under US$500, reports Bloomberg, putting the tablet in the same price point as closest rival, Apple’s iPad.

“The product will be very competitively priced,” Research In Motion (RIM) co-CEO Jim Balsillie was quoted as saying. Unveiled in September, the PlayBook will begin hitting shelves in the first quarter of next year in North America before expanding globally from the second quarter.

Apple’s iPad, in comparison, retails for US$499.

Already, RIM are facing an uphill task as latest figures show the iPad dominating close to 95% of the nascent tablet market. Other vendors like Samsung and Hewlett-Packard are all scrambling to unleash a tablet device of their own, most of which operate under Google’s Android operating system.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs himself pronounced other tablets “dead on arrival” as they’re all too small to compete with his iPad, which boasts a 9.7-inch screen compared to the PlayBook’s 7-inches.

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