There is no question that a huge point of focus for Research in Motion at CES 2011 will be the BlackBerry PlayBook.  Even though the show officially doesn’t start until today, RIM has already let bloggers to play around with the device and a Sprint 4G BlackBerry PlayBook has been officially announced and is supposed to come out this summer.  This has kind of got me to wondering, is the BlackBerry PlayBook actually the next generation BlackBerry?

One of the things that I really like about the BlackBerry PlayBook is that it is small enough to fit into the breast pocket of a man’s sport coat.  This is, in my opinion, just one of the huge advantages over the current iPad (a glorious device by the way).  There are places that I just don’t take my iPad because I have to actively carry it, but the PlayBook can fit into my jacket pocket.

Now that we know that Sprint is sticking 4G into the PlayBook there is no reason to believe that you couldn’t make a phone call from it.  We don’t know if Sprint or RIM will actually make voice a priority for the 4G PlayBook, however, the ability clearly would be there if the carrier allows it.  A 7-inch tablet is still a bit too big to be a primary phone, but, how hard would it be for RIM to shrink the PlayBook down to, say,  4.7 inches?  Maybe 4.3 inches?  Something tells me that RIM probably already has…

Gang, I think that the BlackBerry PlayBook may actually be the next BlackBerry smartphone…