For many months now, Research In Motion has been aggressively promoting its new Blackberry 10 operating system and the devices that are going to launch with it. The new OS has a very intuitive touch experience, including features like swiping your thumb around a clock on the screen to set an alarm. Blackberry Hub and Blackberry Flow are being marketed as the signature technologies that set BB 10 apart.
Hub aggregates all the messages on the phone into one place, and flow allows users to seamlessly transition between apps without having to quit and restart any. The OS has garnered some positive response from critics, which is crucial for the difficulty stricken Canadian tech company. Failure of this new software could mean the final push over the cliff for RIM, followed by sales of its handset business and other drastic outcomes.
Blackberry has long been stuck in this chicken and egg problem between unsatisfied customers and unwilling developers. Since more people have been switching to Android and iOS, developers are focusing their energy on making apps for those platforms. Since Android and iOS have better apps, more consumers choose them over Blackberry! With the new OS, RIM was hoping to revamps its Blackberry App World and make it competitive once again. However, developers still seem skeptical about devoting any resources to Blackberry.
John Hering, CEO of the mobile security firm Lookout, was quoted saying that Android and iOS are the future of computing. Lookout currently has an app for both Apple and Android phones, but nothing for Blackberry. Many other companies like Instagram and Spotify have also adopted the same approach.
RIM has attempted to rectify this situation several times in the past. Not so long ago, the company released a program that allows easy repackaging of Android apps so that they can be sold on the App World. But this plan backfired, as there were reports of plagiarized apps from Google Play being sold on the Blackberry App World.
This is a grave problem for RIM, but the company claims that they have made large strides in solving it with Blackberry 10. In fact, they recently pushed the submission deadline for apps further, alleging that they were receiving a very large volume of entries. Right now, all eyes are on the January 30th launch in New York City.
January 25, 2013 at 12:28 pm
I hope you didnt get paid to write this rubbish and you are just an intern volunteering.
5 minutes of googling would indicate developers love the new BB10 eco system, have submitted several thousand apps before launch and blackberry developers earn more money than iOS and Android developers…who have an oversupply of free (cr)apps to compete with and cheap consumers.
January 25, 2013 at 2:59 pm
This article is hugely flawed. Instagram will be on BlackBerry10; maybe not necessarily at launch but at some point in the near future given RIMs long-standing relationship with FaceBook (who owns instagram) and that FaceBook will be there for launch. In addition to such; many mobile users – specifically iOS & Andriod users – have taken issue with the fact that neither of the latestest versions of either OS comes standard with a Instagram-Like photo-editing software which would allow users all the power/ease of the application w/out requiring them commit to yet another social-network. RIM acquired a photo/video editing company 2 years ago and an instagram-like app will be built in to the native BB10 Camera – so users have a choice; download instagram or not, either way you get the same capabilities. In addition, to say RIMS port-a-thons designed to encourage Andriod developers to port their apps hasn’t been a success is a fabrication; in fact, in the last 2 port athons, over 37k apps were ported to BlackBerry World for BB10 in two weekends – that’s an insane number. BlackBerry10 will launch with 70-100k apps (which is a world record for a new OS) and more importantly, the top 200-400 apps per region. So if you’re thinking about BlackBerry 10 and worried about your favorite app, rest assured there is a very good chance it will be on BlackBerry for you. This particular developer clearly isn’t very intelligent either as developers who build for BlackBerry make more money then on any other platform as BlackBerry users are more inclined to purchase apps as opposed to Andriod/iOS apps which have a much lower paid-app ratio. It’s also a numbers game; do you want to be 1/1B apps in the istore (over 50% of which doesn’t have a single download) or 1/100k apps in BlackBerry world for launch?