What’s new with RIM? New phones, videochat coming to PlayBook, new apps, and more

RIM, the company behind the BlackBerry line of products, have a number of announcements today.  First up is some new phones.  Two BlackBerry Bold smartphones were announced today, the 9900 and the 9930 combine exciting new features like Near Field Communications (NFC), HD video recording and playback, and the new BlackBerry 7 OS.

Next up is video chat.  In an app that, according to the press release, is being released tomorrow, RIM is promising “one click” video and voice chatting over Wi-Fi on their recently released PlayBook tablet.

Also for the PlayBook is a native Facebook app.  While the details are pretty sparse at this point, RIM’s press releases promises that it will provide basically what you would expect: a native 7″ Tablet interface to chat, share photos and videos, interact with friends and more. We’ll be sure to take a look at the app when it’s released later this month.

RIM also announced that the BlackBerry Enterprise Solution (BES), the solution that brings the security of the their Enterprise Server to BlackBerry devices, is going to “incorporate secure device management for Android and iOS based devices and tablets, all managed from a single web-based console” according to their press release. Clearly, RIM is beginning to come to terms with the fact that they’re no longer the only game in town – and providing options for customers to use their secure enterprise technology on smartphones and tablets of their choosing.  This mirrors RIM’s previous announcement that Android apps would be made available to the PlayBook tablet through a special Android app player.