Can BlackBerry's rumored tablet unseat iPad?

It seems everybody is trying to get into the tablet business, and the latest rumor of a new tablet is now swirling about Research in Motion’s BlackBerry.

Notes from a research analyst, Ashok Kumar of Rodman & Renshaw, fueled the rumor mill, sparking discussions at Ubergizmo, TechRadar, CNET and other sites dedicated to emerging products. Kumar says that the rumored BlackBerry tablet will have a 7-inch display and a 1GHz processor from Marvell, which also supplies the main processor for the BlackBerry Bold 9700.

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Kumar also said that the yet-to-be-revealed tablet has two cameras, a front-facing one and a rear-facing one, for videoconferencing. The iPhone 4 has this dual camera feature, but not the current tablet market leader, the iPad.

And also unlike the iPad, the BlackBerry tablet will support Flash.

Ben Patterson at Yahoo News wonders whether the rumored tablet would be “a ‘companion’ to a standard BlackBerry handset (similar to Palm’s ill-fated Folio) or a stand-alone device like the iPad.” So a BlackBerry smartphone might function as a sort of mothership to the BlackBerry tablet.

The Wall Street Journal reported last month that RIM was testing a tablet device that would be a “larger-screen companion to its BlackBerry phone,” connecting to cellular networks through a BlackBerry phone. The Journal’s sources say it will be due out at the end of the year. No word on pricing yet.