Hot on the heels of my scathing diatribe against the once-mighty Blackberry empire, Erick and I explore the current financial and development situation that has befallen our neighbors to the North. Plus, we have an extra special guest who, as Erick notes, will “build an app for any platform, even Windows Phone 7″ but bailed on BBOS.
As I wrote in my post, I wish it didn’t have to be this way. RIM has long been a powerhouse in the mobile world and their failure to adapt mirrors Nokia’s: it’s the sense that internally, the successes of the past defined the actions of the present, resulting in out-dated thinking. → Read More
The Playbook is a study in missed opportunities. The sexy form factor, interesting new UI elements, and distinct, recognizable branding should have set it apart and made it a real player in the tablet game. Instead, it’s a mishmash of consumer and pro features, and missing things that would give any shopper pause. Why would they go to market without even a native email client? Sources say it was in fact a fundamental limitation of the Blackberry system. → Read More
Seesmic might have the sweetest Twitter app for Blackberry, but the Blackberry’s appeal isn’t sweet enough. Seesmic is discontinuing support for its Blackberry app on June 30.
Research in Motion, the company that makes the Blackberry, is going through a rough spot right now. But things must be pretty bad if Seesmic bailing. This is Seesmic, folks! They’ll build an app for any platform, even Windows Phone 7. → Read More
Breaking - Dolby has just announced that it has filed patent infringement lawsuits in the United States and Germany against BlackBerry maker Research In Motion.
The lawsuits seek recovery of financial damages and injunctions to halt sales of “many RIM products” that Dolby claims infringes its patents. → Read More
BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) this morning announced intentions to debut the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet in an additional 16 markets over the next 30 days, including the UK, Hong Kong, France, India, Spain and Australia.
So far, RIM’s iPad competitor has only been available to customers in North America (since April 19, 2011), and has drawn mixed reviews. → Read More
The majority of BlackBerry owners out there tend to fall on the enterprise side of things, so it only makes sense that RIM would build an app that caters to its suit-wearing, email-checking, conference-calling customer base. The app is called BlackBerry Mobile Conferencing, and it basically streamlines the entire tedious process of dialing in, giving an ID code, etc. North American BlackBerry owners will now be able to skip over annoying conferencing details by simply pressing a “Join Now” button to enter the conversation from their smartphone. → Read More
Remember that one time when there was no Facebook app for the iPad? And everyone was really upset about it? And we all just wished that Zuckerberg and Jobs could find some common ground, whether it be in Flash or not? Yeah, we haven’t quite woken up from that nightmare yet, but BlackBerry users certainly have something to celebrate: Facebook for Blackberry Beta v2 (Beta 3!) just went live in the BlackBerry Beta Zone. → Read More
Reuters is reporting that wonder twins, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, could be out at RIM as shareholders continued to watch the company falter in the smartphone and revenue race. The expectation is that an group of activist investors could make a move to control the company and make changes at the top. On investor saw the pair as “taxed for time” and under pressure to perform even as they were left behind. → Read More
Japan’s biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo has announced its summer line-up of cell phones today, and we have squeezed all their nine new smartphones (plus Fujitsu’s Windows 7/Symbian hybrid) into this article for your reading pleasure (click here for a list of all new feature phones). → Read More
I don’t often like to post “numbers” news since we’re hardware guys, but this particular stat sticks out: Mike Lazaridis just reported that BlackBerry sold 150 million phones in the past 12 years and sold 15 million last quarter. To put this into perspective, Nokia shipped 108.5 million mobile devices in Q1 2011 while AT&T alone sold 3.6 million iPhones last quarter. Like the baby bear’s bowl of porridge, RIM isn’t too hot nor is it too cold. Some would say, in fact, that those sales are just right or, barring that, tepid. → Read More
An app that probably should have appeared on the Playbook at launch, video chat, is coming to tablet owners tomorrow morning in an OTA update. In addition to front and back camera support, the chat app allows you to make VOIP and video calls as well as connectivity based on the user’s BBID. The app features “powerful in-call functions” like – and I’m not making this up – “mute/unmute.” → Read More
I’m here at Blackberry World in Orlando and I’m waiting patiently for news of a/many new phone(s). Keep your eyes on the prize here and I’ll be posting the news as soon as it happens at 8:30am Eastern/5:30am Pacific. → Read More
Sales Manager: Where’s Paul? He’s the only one who knows how to paste in the fake images onto devices in the catalog. Intern: He’s at lunch. I can try. I know Photoshop. Sales Manager: No, you’re an intern. I’ll do it. What is this thing? A tablet? Intern: Yeah, but… Sales Manager: Go take pictures of those USB thingers that just came in. Let me concentrate. And get me a latte. via MacMall via Eng → Read More
In the tablet world right now, there’s the iPad and then there’s everyone else. Sorry, Xoom, despite your hype, you just don’t cut it yet. But a new challenger is just about to take the stage and it comes from a somewhat unlikely player: RIM.
People have been talking about the BlackBerry PlayBook for months now following its initial unveiling last September and a buzz-worthy showcase at CES back in January. But at the time, RIM noted that there was much work still to do before it would be released. And that work is continuing right up to the April 19 launch next week. But the product is complete enough now that RIM felt comfortable giving out review units. We got one of them and have had a chance to use the device extensively over the past week or so. So how is it? → Read More
DARPA has put out a request for full-disk encryption for iOS and Android-based devices. The deal is that the Defense Advances Research Projects Agency wants to have greater choice when it comes to smartphone selection, having used the BlackBerry for years without complaint. That’s because it was only the BlackBerry that met the agency’s encryption requirements. → Read More
How long can Apple hold onto its dominance of the tablet market with the iPad? There no question that the iPad is leaps and bounds ahead of all other tablets, including the latest Android tablets running Honeycomb, in terms of market share, apps, design and overall experience. With the recently released iPad 2, it is maintaining its lead. But how long can that last? After all, Android caught up in smartphone market share pretty fast.
Today, Gartner released some estimates that take a stab at guessing what will happen to tablet market share through 2015. Last year, Apple’s iOS held an estimated 84 percent share, compared to 14 percent for Android. The iPad’s share of the tablet market is expected to drop to 69 percent this year, 64 percent next year, and keep falling to 47 percent by 2015. It will still have the largest share, but during the same period Android is expected to grow to 39 percent share. → Read More
I was originally going to write something like “Weekend Giveaway: An iPod Classic Case Plus Something Else” and then make you guys read the whole post to find out that I was going to include a Blackberry Playbook in the prize and then you’d be angry and come to my house and stuff and nobody wanted that. So here goes: we’re going to give you one lucky reader a Blackberry Playbook. It won’t ship until the official release date – April 19 – but it will be one of the first Playbooks to roll off the assembly lines. Entering, as you probably know by now, is simple. → Read More
RIM’s doing their damnedest to keep their BlackBerry World announcements a secret, but it just doesn’t seem to be working. Just last week, a photo gallery of their next full touchscreen device (don’t call it a Storm) leaked out. This week, it’s something even more exciting: the BlackBerry Bold Touch got pawed at. → Read More
As hard as they tried, RIM just couldn’t find a fanbase with the BlackBerry Storm. Between a mild critical reception, a handful of hardware issues in the first batches, and the super wonky SurePress touchscreen that people came to know it for, the “Storm” name has been… tainted, in a way.
Seems like RIM agrees. A handful of mega clear shots of the next full touchscreen BlackBerry device, currently codenamed “Monza” (or “Monaco”, if we’re talking about the Verizon version) just leaked out, and word on the street is that it might not carry the Storm name. → Read More
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