Research in Motion showcased its next generation BlackBerry 10 OS yesterday in order to give a little insight into the product’s capabilities. In comparison to its predecessors, BB 10 seems to have a lot of promise. RIM has finally begun to think into the future by designing a slick new operating system. This new OS has been exclusively designed for touch screens. Despite all the improvements, the OS will still include RIM’s focus on enterprise, which points to a stable and secure platform. The company has also reached out to developers in a major way for development of apps, especially with regard to gaming and social networking.
The company was considered the king of smartphone makers as late as 2009, but has rapidly lost out to more future centric platforms like iOS and Android. The company’s share in handsets has dropped to 12.3%, much behind Android and iOS according to numbers released by ComScore. RIM hopes that this new OS will help it regain some of that lost share. The new OS looks really impressive, sporting features like an adaptive keyboard which can adjust to the user’s typing style. Also included are keyboard gestures which simplify sentence construction. Even the camera software has been completely rewritten from the ground up, as it allows the user to use frames just before a picture is clicked to get that perfect shot.
RIM is even considering taking the platform beyond the mobile domain. The company plans to implement this OS on cars and embedded devices, thus aiming expand its reach into other niche segments. This is not surprising given that RIM acquired QNX, a company that is known to design software platforms used in cars.
RIM will probably not be regaining its lost market share in the near future as Google and Apple continue to dominate the smartphone market with a combined share of 81.7%. However it will hope to improve those numbers by a significant margin. RIM would also be facing problems from a Microsoft’s mobile platform; Windows Phone. Although the platform is yet to catch up among consumers, RIM need to be wary of the tech giant’s potential, especially after the release of the Metro-style platform better known as Windows 8.
Blackberry 10 has already managed to generate a lot of hype and also possesses the necessary potential to convince consumers to make a switch. RIM also announced that it would continue to produce phones with physical keyboards on its new platform as well (no doubt motivated by the public outcry by diehard BB fans). The BB 10 OS is expected to release in the third quarter this year.
