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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.
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.
Could be staking their dwindling future on windows phones.
Seriously, I wonder what the prospects for the windows phone are. My starting assumption is that Microsoft knows they need to succeed in the smart phone game and that this would be a good thing to blow their cash hoard on unless they want to stay a PC software company. So I assume they are going to make some company succeed but may have not made up their minds which.
The obvious choice is Nokia's headlong commitment to Windows phones. Clearly a willing partner with the manufacturing, distribution and hardware support capability that knows how to work with every phone company. That's good. The down side is perhaps they are and ARM based smart phone. Can they make the leap to Intel? Early reviews say windows RT (arm) is a total half baked disaster. On the other hand reviews of the XOLO (which is intel android) say that the arm emulation is almost flawless. So there is a possibility they could run windows 8 intel but emulate the legacy ARM drivers and programs.
If they are first to market with the widest distribution of a high power windows 8 then developers will target that devices characteristics. Could be a win. If they try to tough it out on ARM I suspect a big fail.
Then there is samsung who dabbles in windows smart phones. Samsung either needs to fork Android like amazon did or keep a foot in windows or they expose themselves to whims of google. If they fork it, they can dictate control of the OS to the carriers just like Apple does. Empirically apple iphones are great precisely because Verizon or AT&T is not trying to customize it to maximize their revenue stream.
But I think neither android or iphone is so great that Microsoft can't succeed given they already have about 100K of developed Apps. Conversely this is exactly why Blackberry has zero chance. No app base means no customers means no developers.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
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.
I just got the $200 model of Playbook for myself. I thought it had better hardware than the $200 Android tablets (camera, hdmi connection), less cost than an iPad and is easier to carry in a pocket for reading and so on. The software selection got a lot better through the Android compatability.
-Gareth
RIM can't afford a billion models and feature sets. They tried that, it led them here. They need a hero phone or 2 and to avoid another expensive PlayBook like flop- despite how nice the device itself is.
What does "real time kernel" mean?
It means that the OS can make guarantees about the time of response to events (usually external inputs).
This is very important for things like antilock brake control systems, not so much for consumer electronics.
In this case, however, it's helpful because we can be assured that Blackberry OS Version 10 will tank within a guaranteed limited time.
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.