Canadian handset company Research In Motion (RIM) has chosen its home country to launch its latest 4G LTE BlackBerry PlayBook tablet with built-in support for cellular networks, a crucial feature that its initial models lacked.

The BlackBerry maker said on Thursday that the new tablets will be launched in Canada next week. Additional variants of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet supporting various high speed cellular networks are expected to be available in the coming months from carriers in the US, Europe, South Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.

The PlayBook tablet, launched more than a year ago, is strategically important for RIM as it is the first product to use the QNX operating system RIM will move onto a new generation of BlackBerry phones designed to compete with sexier devices already on the market.

But the PlayBook was widely criticised at launch for lacking basic features such as email, and it has failed to wow consumers despite sharply discounted pricing and a major software upgrade.