Research In Motion (RIM) unveiled a next generation platform for its Blackberry smartphones on Oct. 18 at a developer conference in San Francisco. The operating system, known simply as BBX, aims to merge Blackberry’s current smartphone platform with that of its PlayBook tablet, QNX. In an attempt to encourage developers, it will support new technologies, like HTML5, which will allow programmers to easily develop for both Blackberry smartphones and tablets.
While Blackberry sales continue to be strong in many parts of the world, the Waterloo-based RIM has recently faced stiff competition at home in the Android and iOS platforms of rivals Google and Apple. Drawing consumers with their intuitive applications, access to media, and full-screen touch interfaces, Android and iPhone devices have eaten into much of Blackberry’s North American market share.
Following the announcement, RIM’s shares rose 3.6 per cent in one day, a good sign for the troubled Canadian firm. Its stock has been down around 60 per cent since the beginning of this year.
Industry opinion of BBX, however, has been less than positive; experts have called the venture everything from “just a pipe dream” (PCWorld) to “a tall order” (AnandTech).
Joesph Vybihal, a faculty lecturer in McGill’s school of computer science, felt RIM took far too long to realize they needed to change their game plan.
“It’s not a little bit late, it’s late,” he said. “While they were developing their Bold and Torch, they were saying, internally, we don’t need a tablet, we don’t need a phone like iPhone. Now they’re starting from nothing. There was a clear lack of view to the future.”
RIM is trying hard to maintain the strength of its email and messaging functionality as well as its integration with corporate servers. These have always been its core assets.
“BBX embraces the best of the BlackBerry platform and the best of the QNX platform to create a brand new platform that extends the BlackBerry DNA of collaboration, communication and immediacy,” RIM said in an email to the Tribune.
The firm’s attempt to encourage the creation of more applications is a hard sell, especially given that a release date for BBX has not been set and there are rumours the platform may not be available until 2013.
“They’re saying: develop web applications now for two years from now, but two years from now Apple is going to do something else,” Vybihal said. “I don’t know if at the last [developer conference] they convinced everybody.”
Application availability is everything in today’s mobile industry, and for now, the Blackberry platform lags behind with far fewer applications than the iPhone and Android.
