RIM on the Edge: Without Innovation, BlackBerry Will Soon Be Irrelevant

Last hebdomad was an eventful unrivalled in the smartphone world: Google purchased Motorola Mobility, HP born WebOS, and–oh yeah!–Research in Apparent movement announced the availableness of its latest BlackBerry smartphones, all running the new Blackberry bush 7 OS. The Bold 9900, Torch 9850, and Torch 9810 are all unobjectionable phones, but they aren't strong enough to make Flange phones free-enterprise once more with iPhones and Android handsets. As it continues to lose customers apace, RIM inevitably to proceeds action at a time–operating theater BlackBerrys may go the direction of WebOS phones.

On the silver lining, we know that RIM is planning to launch a line of products supported on the QNX OS (which runs RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook tablet). But in the fast-moving mobile world, time is of the gist. Though the leaked images, rumored specs, and buzzed-about features sound alluring, how will the phones compare to those running Android, iOS, operating theatre flush Windows Phone 7 by the prison term they come out? Is IT already too late for Brim to climb back up to the acme?

The clock is ticking on Flange: To win over customers, the company mustiness entirely defecate all over the BlackBerry OS, design hardware that rump compete with rival phones in processing king and introduction, and produce a determined travail to reach out to the developer community.

The sales numbers sadly reflect the current lack of innovation: RIM–one time the top-ranking smartphone vendor–has posted the lowest year-to-year growth among IDC's tipto five smartphone vendors this twelvemonth (Apple, Samsung, Nokia, RIM, and HTC).

BlackBerry 7 Atomic number 76: Playing Catch-Aweigh

The newest BlackBerry phones demonstrate how far behind RIM is in both hardware and software. They're hearty, but they wear't have sufficient appeal to entice many existing Android and iPhone users to switch to BlackBerry. On top of that, the prices of the Woolly mullein 9850 ($200) and the Bold 9900/9930 ($250 to $300, depending on the carrier) are a good deal overly high for 3G phones. These BlackBerrys are ample to keep RIM in the smartphone arms run, but they North Korean won't help the company put on many new customers. For object lesson, wherefore would you choose the 3G, single-meat BlackBerry Woolly mullein 9850 happening Dash when you dismiss select the multiple-core, 4G HTC EVO 3D for only $50 more? Besides having superior ironware, the EVO offers access to the Android Market, which has Interahamw Thomas More apps than the Blackberry bush App World (250,000 apps versus 37,276 apps).

At the real least, Flange's efforts to play catch-up picture that it is monitoring the challenger and trying to remain relevant in this oh-soh-crazy mobile world. Still, having to play catch-up isn't an ideal of import office to personify in, and information technology isn't as though BlackBerry 7 OS adds any groundbreaking, one-of-a-kind features. When the Windows Phone 7 Mango update came out, many an critics accused Microsoft of playing catch-up, as it added lively features such as third-party multitasking. But unusual observers applauded Mango because of the unique features IT added to Bing, such as a localized lookup function (for finding nearby restaurants operating room attractions) and a music-recognition engine. On the bright lateral, the performance difference betwixt BlackBerry 6 OS and Blackberry bush 7 OS is clearcut, and I'm excited to see where RIM goes with near-field communication (NFC). Currently exclusively available for the Bold 9900, NFC lets you make payments with your phone and switch over information (so much as a telephone number operating room photo) with another NFC-enabled phone.

Overall, though, I remember BlackBerry OS is in desperate need of a lift. As I've been saying for some time, Blackberry bush's user interface doesn't feel modern. In some ways information technology reminds Maine of Windows Phone 6.5. It looks like a nontouch OS with touch support added in. You stimulate to dig through multiple menus to find what you want. For instance, to transposition from still images to video in the camera interface, you take in to jam the Menu paint and so scroll almost clear down through the options to get to the video camera.

In my opinion, Brim needs to take a page from Microsoft and rebuild the BlackBerry OS from scratch, as Microsoft did with its mobile OS. Simply introducing updates present and there won't cut it.

QNX Oculus sinister: RIM's Hail Mary?

The newsworthiness on coming BlackBerry hardware isn't encouraging. Earlier this month, we proverb leaked images (from BGR) of the prototypal QNX phone, dubbed the BlackBerry Colt. Acccording to bruit, the Colt will arrive in the first quarter of 2020, and it reportedly will ship with a single-core CPU. If so, a full yr after the first Android treble-core phones appeared, Blackberry bush still won't have got a two-fold-nub handset. And like the PlayBook, the Colt may establish without support for BlackBerry's Enterprise Server. If that rumor proves to comprise even, you'll have to use Microsoft's ActiveSync in prescribe to utilization Exchange email. Considering that the BlackBerry Enterprise Server has a bad large corporate customer base, I have to ask: Why would RIM exclude out its ain customers from its modish product again? Will Flange replicate the mistake it made with the PlayBook and rush a crazy, incomplete product to securities industry?

Perhaps the near worrisome news I've seen recently is that RIM just this week released the genus Beta of the native SDK for QNX tablet apps to developers. Yes, that's four months after IT released the Blackberry bush PlayBook. Even worse, the SDK is a out of use beta, and Brim warns that "interested developers should apply to the beta quickly equally space is limited and will be granted on a first-come, first-served basis." This approach ISN't exactly hospitable toward the developer community, is it? A lack of apps is one of the big reasons why BlackBerry OS is troubled in the mobile phone place, so why is Lip making the same mistakes with QNX? RIM should have made the beta unresolved–or at the least not put up a message frustrating fascinated developers from applying.

Learning From Others' Mistakes

RIM can see from the mistakes that Palm so HP made with WebOS. A poor selling strategy, lack of apps, and dateable hardware were the main reasons WebOS failed in the marketplace. And like WebOS, BlackBerry OS is a dandy operating organisation. Blackberry bush's enterprise offerings stay on unmatched, and nobody builds as good a physical hardware keyboard as RIM. But Flange needs to be building features, hardware, and software that bottom compete with its rivals two years from directly–not trying to make up ground on phones that have already out.

Flange's OS makeover needs to be impeccable systematic to succeed. Remember the disastrous BlackBerry Violent storm? Lip definitely doesn't want to go through that kind of debacle again. Apparently RIM has tried to play it safe afterwards that fiasco, but I think it's sentence to take another risk. Blackberry bush 7 OS barely keeps RIM afloat–and sadly, QNX and the upcoming BlackBerry phones don't look too promising either.

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