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RIM's Future Hangs On Developer Support For 'New BlackBerry'
alphadogg writes "With its future up for grabs, Research in Motion at its annual BlackBerry World conference next week will focus on simplifying development for its soon-to-be-unveiled BlackBerry 10 operating system. HTML5 is one key technology in that strategy to create a viable ecosystem of applications for a new generation of mobile devices expected to ship by year-end. The simplicity is needed because BB10, based on a real time kernel acquired with RIM's buyout of QNX Software Systems in 2010, is a complete break with the software that runs on standard BlackBerry smartphones. 'It's a bit of a challenge,' says Tyler Lessard, formerly a RIM vice president in charge of the global developer program, and since October 2011 chief marketing officer at mobile security vendor Fixmo. 'There's very little or no compatibility between the old and new operating systems. Existing apps can't be carried forward to QNX and BB 10. The question is, once the BlackBerry 10 smartphones launch, can RIM have an adequate catalog of apps?'"
Embrace Android, become a hardware power house. License BES tech, advertise battery life.
Could be staking their dwindling future on windows phones.
But if they don't innovate (read port to android and ditch the hardware business) they're doomed.
They're going to be stuck in the same position that Palm was only 3 years further down the line in technology. QNX is pretty slick but they're going to have to encourage (bribe) developers and keep pushing the way Microsoft has with Windows Phone if they want to have a prayer... Every day they wait on hardware is a slightly smaller chance of any kind of success.
Works great, very stable, responsive.
Lots of good apps, just filter out some Android apps to get higher quality. A lot of the complaints are from miscreants/malcontents.
Check out BallxHole. Very realistic physics, Free version available. Lots of native Os 2.0 apps. As for phone os10, good point ... Hope they maintain backward compat!
I myself am quite happy with my Blackberry and I'm really curious what they will bring to the table.
I really think they should diversify their hardware, bring some qwerty models, like the Curve, Bold and Torch. But also full touchsreen devices, with small screens to bigger screens. Like 3,2" and 3,7" and 4,3" for example.
I do think they are still interesting for developers. They will have their own platform. But also Qt support, which might bring in a lot of old Nokia developers. They also support Android, allthough apps for BB-Android need to be repackaged.
Well, don't worry about that. We can get you back before you leave. (Dr. Who)
So I'm making an app, i can chose to develop for iOS.... or the BB10?
Seriously, why would i spent any time and resources on that platform, when I could just target iOS, and take advantage of the app store and the entire ecosystem that doesn't exist for the BB10?
It looks like BlackBerry might be set to make the same mistake Palm did when they launched WebOS. Palm completely abandoned a huge "ecosystem" of PalmOS users, software, and developers by not supporting PalmOS software on WebOS. I'm not suggesting that this move was solely responsible for Palm's demise, but it certainly contributed. Sounds like BlackBerry is getting ready to do the same thing with their "Blackberry 10" OS.
"RIM's Future Hangs On Developer Support For 'New BlackBerry'"
I had a "quad band" (?) BlackBerry for years and kinda liked it's "full" keyboard to SMS.
But I've developped for the BlackBerry which you *could* more or less program in Java but it was nonsense. They did definitely alienate the developers. If Java wasn't an option (it is now for Android btw ; ) then they should have made that clearer. It was by far the most buggy JVM of all the phones (and that's not a compliment, some of them were really terrible : but Blackberry's JVM was the buggiest of them all).
And the lock-in (proprietary APIs and whatnots). RIM is going the way so many tech companies went: things are turning fast in this world.
If they wanted to count on developers then they should have taken good care of them. Bad APIs. Bad support. Snobbish attitude.
What goes around comes around and the developers are now getting their revenge.
Goodbye RIM : )
Blackberry could continue to fill the role for businesses of a cheap, reliable text/phone appliance.
The Blackberry Ecosystem is such an enormous pain to develop for. Just trying to port over an existing Android app is one roadblock after another: the porting / re-signing tools were flaky. You had to use shitty MS Windows and follow weird badly written signing instructions. Developing natively is probably even worse - I hardly got anywhere with that. And this is all before you get to the market posting requirements.
In comparison, the Android development environment "just works". Toss Eclipse on Ubuntu, do a couple add-ins, and you are up and running in an hour or two. Very very low cost to develop an application. Clear instructions on what you need to do to get on the market. Amazon was pretty simple as well.
The banks and government business is the only thing keeping RIM afloat, and that can last a little while, but its a bad business model. RIM deserves to die.
Have that resume ready, RIM employees. You are going to need it soon.
Answer: does RIM currently have an adequate catalog of apps?
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
What makes a Playbook a better choice than an Android tablet or an iPad? I know nothing about them.
What does "real time kernel" mean?
You are welcome on my lawn.
As a (former) Blackberry developer, I've decided that I will be doing no more development for their platforms. They pissed away any goodwill I had for them by their crappy tools, crappy support and their ridiculous policies. As an example, in order to become a development partner, which is the ONLY way to get real support from them, you have to sign a license that basically gives RIM rights to use any of your source code that you develop for their platform. Or typically, if you tried to discuss a problem on their support forums, they would allow developers to spend weeks or months trying to figure out a problem before stepping in and say, "Oh, ya, we know about this. It's on our internal bug tracking system," and then close the discussion to new posts. This was often for bugs that had been around for several major API versions, or even from the very FIRST API version.
Fighting through the mess seemed like it was worth it when it seemed like everybody in the market for the software I was developing had a Blackberry, but now that it's dropped down to almost zero, you want me to invest my time and money into a brand new platform? No, thanks. At this point, I'm content to see you slip beneath the waves and to try to forget you exist. Goodbye.
Optimized to write the Blackberry Email App?
This opens the market to run the end to end encrypted blackberry email app on all androids, not just blackberyy. Poof instant mega market share.
This also opens up the blackbery to run Angry Birds and that whole ecosystem and makes it a very useful AND mainstream device. Poof, instant app catalog.
And gives the crusty old farts that love their Blackberries (like say a president) a very nice upgrade path. Poof, the hardcore, loyal, exclusive fan base will love you forever.
There is a big Military/Government appetite for secure email. Blackberry is already there, while everyone is not even really playing, never mind playing catchup.
Make the secure back end servers available as a separate, exclusive and expensive product.
Put a special chip in the Blackberry for encryption/security that speeds things up.
"It just runs better on a blackberry."
Blackberry rebrands itself as a premium secure communications company, lands fat government and fortune 1000 contracts for the higher ups that need the security.
Blackberry can make a fat margin on it's premium branded phone.
My Android app can run on it, so I can make a buck too!
"Are you running email, or BLACKBERRY email?"
Preload the Premium blackberry phones with blackberry software and transfer software and a special cable that attaches to the old phone that makes Old Fart Migration easy and Guaranteed.
You'll get the Premium Dollars.
RIM is so dead that posting on this story isn't worth anyone's time.
Oh my!! :/
Androidlers are soooo upset that blackberry users have a real OS to use that they have to vomit propaganda
All over the Internet. I am scratching my head as to why they support android when Microsoft clearly owns it
Due to license royalties and is the company profiting the most from it, but they don't seem to like talking about that.
n/t
Open source QNX. Its their only hope.
A man spends the first half of his life accumulating stuff, the second trying to get rid of it all.
You really are a dumb fuck aren't you? The reason Windows Phone is so shitty and laggy is that it's built upon the equally shitty and laggy Windows CE. Calling Windows Phone a brand new OS is really just bullshit since it's based upon the antiquated and shitty Windows CE codebase. This explains why multi-tasking on Windows Phones is so horrible.
> What is the distinguishing feature? Unlike LG, HTC or Samsung, RIM is a North American company, I would still prefer RIM and I want RIM to develop their own OS. Android and Apple-iOS have lots of drawbacks and problems, as a consumer I want more options.
If that's your criteria (being North American), then you can by Mot as well. It's owned by Google. If enough people thought like you, Palm would have been a success.
Incidentally, how do you define 'North American' (or for that matter American)? Samsung, HTC and LG have Android on their phones, not some native Korean or Chinese OS. Or conversely, those phones are manufactured in China, but so for that matter is Mot, Nokia, Sony-Ericsson and others. In fact, using this criteria, one can question whether Samsung and LG are Korean any longer, or Sony is Japanese any longer, or Nokia is European any longer. Or does RIM manufacture in Canada itself?
I just read the headline and thought "RIM is so fucked." I read "There's very little or no compatibility between the old and new operating systems. Existing apps can't be carried forward to QNX and BB 10." and thought "they're not developing now, why are they going to bother?" I'm hoping RIM will last until I've actually finished paying for my BlackBerry 9300 ...
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Android is a failed platform used by those who cannot see a future beyond Google. Worse, Android is the death of diversity in Linux distributions on mobile, where MeGo or another platform should be the first choice. Google's stranglehold on Android has meant a breach of trust in the mobile Open Source developer community, where the California centric business is the only concern.
RIM has better applications because it's OS and API was further ahead from the begining.
Let RIM weather the storm of criticism until the next release of its products. The only reason they take so much flack is because of the money behind promoting the other platform.
Google would prefer if we say NSA4Ever, but diverse vendors would avoid that lock in with your personal and corporate data.
Hoping for develop support to save them? Really? They should bet the farm on world peace...it has a better chance of happening.
At a very low level, the new QNX-based BB is incompatible with previous OSes, but there's nothing technically preventing them from supporting apps built for Java ME with the BB OS 7 or similar extensions. If they're going for Android compatability, then it's more the Google Java-like engine, but dropping Java ME will be a big shift for developers, albeit a welcome and long over-due one. Both Sun and RIM lagged on improvements to Java ME to make phone development more practical, and now most everything except intense games and heavier device integration or content protection apps are going web-based anyway.