Today is BlackBerry Jam, RIM’s developer conference or WWDC equivalent. It’s RIM’s moment to redefine, rejuvenate, and re-establish itself in the world. Whether or not the company can pull it off, however, is an entirely different matter.
BlackBerry 10, RIM’s brand new platform, has been delayed, run into naming issues, and seen the transfer of power go from the company’s co-founders, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, to long-time employee Thorsten Heins. The conference will prove whether or not RIM is now adaptable — something for which the company has been publicly flogged for the past year.
We took a trip up to Waterloo to speak with some of the employees ahead of the event, namely Vivek Bhardwaj, Head of Software Portfolio EMEA for RIM, and as I walked away I felt less sure of who RIM is and what the company is about than I ever have before. → Read More
It was a big day for football fans, with both the AFC and NFC Championships taking place this afternoon and this evening. The games grab more than a few eyeballs every year — last year’s championships grabbed 54.8 million and 51.9 million viewers, respectively. While the numbers aren’t out yet for today’s games, the viewership is expected to be equally as enormous.
That’s why so many in the Twittersphere have been so quick to point out that, nestled quietly behind a hotly contested NFC Championship between the New York Giants and the San Francisco 49ers, and an equally great game over in the AFC, was a fairly huge announcement for the maker of BlackBerry, Research In Motion. During Championship Sunday, RIM quietly released a statement saying that its co-CEOs, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, are stepping down and will be replaced by current COO for products and sales, Thorsten Hein. → Read More
I suppose some might have seen this coming. In December, Research In Motion (RIM) released their third quarter earnings, which were yet another disappointment for the struggling maker of BlackBerry. RIM Co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis announced subsequently that they would only draw yearly salaries of $1 to help combat the company’s financial woes.
Today, it seems the pressure has become too great, and a management shuffle is under way. The Globe has reported that the co-CEOs, after a year of pressure from investors and stockholders, have stepped down from the position. Company insider and current COO Thorsten Heins will be replacing them as the new chief executive. → Read More
Research In Motion this morning introduced a new enterprise mobility solution dubbed BlackBerry Mobile Fusion, aiming to help its business and government clients manage employees’ smartphones and tablets running the BlackBerry operating system, but also Android and iOS devices like the iPhone and the iPad.
Currently in early beta testing with a limited number of enterprise customers, RIM expects to kick off a closed beta program in January 2012, with general availability scheduled for late March 2012 (pricing unknown). → Read More
Happy anniversary to me: I’ve now been writing this here weekly column for exactly one year. In that time I have opined, prescribed, and predicted many things. And now, as part of my one-man crusade for greater opinion-journalism accountability, I’m going to take a moment to go back and look at what I got right … and where I went horribly, hilariously wrong.
With luck this will be an annual event. I mean, assuming Erick doesn’t take a look at this track record and decide to can me on the spot.
(cracks knuckles)
OK, then: without any further ado, let’s see what I said over the last 52 weeks, and why… → Read More
In a high-profile departure, Tyler Lessard quit his job as VP of BlackBerry Global Alliances & Developer Relations at Research in Motion (RIM) at the end of last month. He worked at RIM, a sinking ship, for over a decade.
He’s now landed at mobile risk management company Fixmo, the company announced this morning. → Read More
There’s no escape. The Blackberry service outage is now impacting users on almost every planet, CNN reports. Tatooine and Coruscant appear to not have been affected yet, but users all over Geonosis, Naboo and Yavin were reportedly hit hard. Our thoughts are with their inhabitants.
(Via @dccrowley and @mpoppel, but probably first noted by @brundle_fly) → Read More
The popular UberSocial Twitter client for BlackBerry (formerly known as UberTwitter) just got an update with a bunch of new features and bug fixes.
Notably, its developer UberMedia is doubling down on its BlackBerry app around the same time one of its rivals, Seesmic, is abandoning the BlackBerry platform.
One of the new features in UberSocial for Blackberry 1.2 is called “Inner Circle”, which basically lets you group together the most important people you follow in an exclusive timeline, alongside the traditional timeline. → Read More
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
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
In case you were holding out for a BlackBerry PlayBook: good news. Research In Motion this morning announced (expected) plans to make the tablet computer available in more than 20,000 retail outlets in the U.S. and Canada. Indeed, pricing starts at $499.
In the U.S., outlets include AT&T, Best Buy, Office Depot, RadioShack, Sprint and Staples.
Best Buy has already announced that the tablet computer is scheduled to be available from all Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile stores in the United States, as well as Best Buy and Future Shop stores in Canada, on April 19. → Read More
BlackBerry maker Research In Motion this morning announced that it will launch its PlayBook tablet computer with 7digital‘s music store pre-installed.
The music store will come installed on the tablet at its launch in the United States and Canada, with further international roll out in 2011, the companies said. → Read More
BlackBerry maker Research In Motion this morning announced that it will launch its PlayBook tablet computer with 7digital‘s music store pre-installed.
The music store will come installed on the tablet at its launch in the United States and Canada, with further international roll out in 2011, the companies said. → Read More
Strange things are afoot in my hometown of Waterloo, Canada, which doubles as Research In Motion’s headquarters. ShopSavvy says that someone there has been running their Android app — on BlackBerry devices. Separately, Bloomberg has reported that RIM’s forthcoming PlayBook tablet will run Android apps. A video from the Mobile World Congress allegedly shows a BlackBerry employee confirming “We’ll also support Android apps.” Their UK managing director refuses to comment on the subject. And if rumours of the mountain en route to Mohammed aren’t enough, there are also reports of Mohammed travelling to the mountain: BGR claims that RIM will soon release their prized BlackBerry Messenger as an Android/iOS app.
Thus far it’s all just smoke and rumors, no confirmed fire … which is also how one could describe the PlayBook itself. RIM first announced the device back in September. My very first TechCrunch post in November was in part about how RIM should embrace Android, he said slightly smugly. Since then, Samsung has released the Galaxy Tab, Dell the Streak 7, and Motorola the Xoom; next week, the iPad 2 will emerge — and yet the PlayBook still has no firm ship date. But at least RIM have been busy on the BlackBerry front, right? I mean, in the last four months, they have announced or released … er … exactly zero new handsets. (They have, however, announced three new VaporBooks. I’m sorry, PlayBooks.) Perhaps they were focused on shoring up their inferior app-development tools? Ask this developer, whose caustic and hilarious rant about RIM’s extreme developer-unfriendliness went viral in the hacker community last week. → Read More
According to eMarketer, Apple is to pass Research In Motion as the leader of the US smartphone market this year, only to be overtaken by Android in 2012.
eMarketer, which bases its forecasts on analysis of research estimates and methodologies from multiple firms who monitor the smartphone market, estimates Apple took a 28% share of the US smartphone user market in 2010, just above the 24% of users who use a device running Android. → Read More
How big a business are mobile apps? In a new report, market research firm Gartner forecasts that global mobile app store revenues will triple from $5.2 billion last year to $15 billion in 2011, and keep growing to an astounding $58 billion by 2014. As with any forecast of a hypergrowth market, you can be sure this one will change in six months, and the further out you go the more guesswork involved. (Remember, less than a year ago nobody was even able to predict how many iPads would be sold this year). But here is one prediction you can count on: you will be hearing these numbers thrown around a lot all year long until a better forecast comes along.
Gartner breaks down the forecast into advertising revenues and paid downloads (including in-app purchases), as you can see from the chart above. Paid downloads and other direct purchases make up the majority of the expected revenues, but mobile advertising is expected to grow nicely over time into a multi-billion dollar market. → Read More
RIM has announced a purchase today—UI developer The Astonishing Tribe (a.k.a TAT). It looks like RIM will be using TAT’s talent to help improve the UI for Blackbery’s new tablet PlayBook as well as for its mobile smartphones. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
As stated in a post: “Today we are pleased to confirm plans for The Astonishing Tribe (TAT) team to join Research In Motion (RIM). We’re excited that the TAT team will be joining RIM and bringing their talent to the BlackBerry PlayBook and smartphone platforms.” → Read More
Research in Motion CEO Jim Balsillie may still be smarting from the fact that Apple passed it in smartphone market share last quarter. Steve Jobs made a point to rub it in during Apple’s most recent earnings conference call: ““We’ve now past RIM, and I don’t see them catching up to us in the near future.”
Asked what he would say to Jobs if he were present today at the Web 2.0 Summit, Balsillie shot back: “You finally showed up.” The implication being that RIM practically invented the smartphone category and is not going anywhere. Balsillie went on to contrast the Blackberry approach to Apple’s when it comes to web apps. There may be 300,000 apps for the iPhone and iPad, but the only app you really need is the browser. “You don’t need an app for the Web,” he says, and that is equally true for the mobile Web. → Read More
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