Though RIM’s new BlackBerry 10 software comes with innovative features, it might be too late for the company to salvage its position in the market. The first iPhone and Android phones were introduced 5 and 4 years earlier respectively. However, the software has potential to be different, if not superior, from iOS and Android that are currently dominating the market.
RIM’s OS has always been difficult to use, designed for phones with a physical keypad. Inspite of modifications meant for touch screen phones, there hasn’t been much improvement. The new OS, however, has been specifically designed for touch screen devices with large displays. It offers large icons and well-developed applications. Inspired from Microsoft, it offers program tiles that serve like widgets, updating the user with information related to the weather or stock prices or whatever else the user may want displayed. With the help of what is called the Flow UI, a user can view new email messages simply by swiping from one corner and switch to the application that notified them, making it easier to switch between individual messages and the inbox with a single swipe.
The software indeed offers an improved version of features which are available on Android and iOS. Other features introduced on BlackBerry 10 includes an enhanced camera application that allows users to modify pictures instantly after clicking them, rectifying slipups like closed eyes when the picture was clicked, replacing it with a better capture of the same moment from instants before the shutter button was pressed. The camera app also boasts of face recognition technology.
RIM has seen a massive drop in sales and market share in the last two years. It would have worked wonders if RIM came up with BB10 two years ago. Now RIM can only hope to share the third position with Microsoft in the smartphone market. While it was easier for Android and iOS to take off, on account of being heavily improved replacements of Nokia and Palm, BlackBerry 10 does not seem to be big enough for users to make a switch from Android or their iPhones.
What RIM actually needs to work on is, to provide its current BlackBerry user base of 77 million an easy transition to the new software, which it has already failed at since the company announced that BB10 will not be compatible with any of the previous Blackberry devices (even the highly capable Bold 9900 series), rendering existing apps useless. In this case, will users stick around or simply opt to switch over to leading platforms in the market?
