Attending the launch of the latest BlackBerry smartphones here in London yesterday, it’s plain that Research In Motion thinks the BlackBerry 7 OS will arrest its slide from the top table of the smartphone market.
But rewind to December last year. Back then, RIM’s co-CEO Mike Lazaridis confirmed that the QNX operating system as seen on the Playbook tablet was destined for the BlackBerry platform.
Well, as far as we know there is no definitive time frame for the shift to QNX except the vague notion that it probably won’t be before the second half of 2012.
And this is not the same as the infamous “burning platform” memo from Nokia chief executive Stephen Elop, who lamented the company’s own operating system MeeGo, suggesting it was dead in the water before it had even got its hair wet.
RIM has to back BB 7 confidently and completely – it has no choice. Its smartphone portfolio has begun looking tired compared to the competition. It is being decimated in the market by Android and Apple, who have evolved faster and better, even gobbling up share in the enterprise space RIM used to call home.
It could not afford to wait and it is relying on the success of the new BB 7 phones to stabilise the BlackBerry ship in time for the release of QNX-based devices.
The updated OS looks and feels fresh, navigation is logical and smooth and touchscreen and software updates improve web browsing.
The Bold in particular is a slim and sophisticated looking phone crafted from brushed stainless steel, which feels solid in your hand.
However, apps drive smartphone success more than design. BlackBerry says there are 35,000 BlackBerry apps in App World. Not bad, but there are at least ten times as many in Apple’s App Store and almost as many on the Android Market.
And it remains to be seen if developers will think it worthwhile to keep producing apps if in the back of their mind they know a new OS is coming.
The NFC capability provides an element of future proofing but at the moment this is more of a luxury than a ‘must have’ as it is not currently well supported by applications.
The BB 7 stop gap, which isn’t a radical update, is also going to face some serious challenges if it is to see RIM through to the introduction of QNX – Android is ever evolving and enjoying remarkable growth and Apple has not been resting on its laurels, with iOS 5 just around the corner. Even Windows is due to receive a significant update in the form of ‘Mango’.
With RIM haemorrhaging market share, particularly in the US, there has been an increasing sense of malaise around the brand. It recently announced it would shed 2,000 members of staff and its first quarter revenues were down a huge 12 percent to £3 billion. Its unconventional management structure featuring two CEOs has also come in for criticism.
The QNX handsets have been excitingly referred to as ‘superphones’ but will BB 7 put RIM in a strong enough position to take advantage of such a phone a year or more from now?
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Comment by email from Tony Cripps, analyst at Ovum:
“RIM's new BlackBerry smartphones could well be the most important devices in the Canadian smart device vendor's history, following a recent slowdown in device shipments, staff cuts and doubts over the company's strategy and leadership.
“On the face of it the two new Bold devices and three new full touchscreen Torch models look competitive. The latest BlackBerry 7 OS and much-improved BlackBerry Browser certainly seem to offer a compelling device-side user experience, one very much comparable to the oft-maligned PlayBook tablet. However, the real proof of the pudding is whether that software-driven experience captures the imagination of third parties who might wish to write and deploy applications or content to those devices.
“RIM can make a good case for having created the most complete web browsing experience on a portable device so far on the PlayBook, a capability that may well now be shared by its new BlackBerry 7 OS devices. However, neither developers nor consumers are yet at the point where this capability substitutes fully for downloadable applications.
“Given that smart devices are increasingly sold to consumers as much on a promise of what those devices can deliver in terms of applications and services as they are on their design, RIM needs to be lobbying big consumer brands hard to embrace and promote BlackBerry 7 OS as much as it can. Success in this endeavour could prove crucial in deciding the fate of RIM's latest devices and maybe its longer term future.”