As I watched the BlackBerry DevCon keynote yesterday one of the things that I noticed was that the BlackBerry that we know and love today really wasn’t mentioned all that much. Presenter after presenter talked about what they were doing in BBX and almost every demonstration was of some app or gaming engine that would run in BBX.
It turns out that BlackBerry DevCon, thus far, has been almost solely about BBX and what’s coming to the BlackBerry PlayBook as well as next-generation BlackBerry smartphones because none of the ‘old’ legacy Java BlackBerry applications will be compatible with BBX. The BlackBerry JDE Runtime Player that has been talked about for as long as the Android App Player has been scrapped and JDE development is effectively being killed off.
A problem for Research in Motion is that they’ve been trying to support an aging BlackBerry OS, while, at the same time, create a new operating system that is on par with other smartphone platforms. RIM’s mantra has been that they would continue to support legacy JDE apps while paving the way to BBX, but, it looks like the company has changed gears and is now following the footsteps of Microsoft who made a clean break away from Windows Mobile when they moved to Windows Phone 7.
One could easily say that RIM would have been better off if they would have come to this decision before they released BlackBerry 6 and put all their development efforts in to BBX, as the company has steadily be loosing market share since BlackBerry 6 came out. One could also say that RIM has 70 million users, many of whom use BlackBerry 6 and BlackBerry 7 devices capable of running Webworks and HTML 5 applications that will run just fine in BBX and the effort to bridge BlackBerry OS to BBX was well worth it…
What do you think?
I think that instead of getting a BlackBerry Bold 9930 when my plan comes up at the beginning of November that I will be getting an iPhone 4s, a Droid Razr, or a Samsung Nexus unless RIM says the Bold can be upgraded to BBX.
I think if I were a long time BlackBerry developer that has been supporting the platform through all of RIM’s miscues to date, I’d be livid they’re dropping me like a hot rock.
If I were totally new to developing for BlackBerry, I’d probably be excited about the prospects QNX brings.
If BBX will be released early next year like they say it will, they probably should have forgone BlackBerry 7 and put all that development effort into BBX and pushed its release up to late fall this year. If BBX won’t be available on BlackBerry phones until later next year, as i suspect, RIM had no choice but to release BlackBerry 7 devices because they would have lost millions of BlackBerry users if they didn’t release new phones this year…
RIM can talk about how profitable BlackBerry Apps are in App World, but, no matter what BS they spread on stage at DevCon, creating apps that most BlackBerry users can use (JDE apps) is hard as fuck compared to Android and iOS.
Can anyone name an HTML5 or WebWorks app that works both on BlackBerry 6 and 7 smartphones as well as the BlackBerry PlayBook?
RIM should have just took a bullet to BlackBerry OS two years ago and focused on BBX. They may have actually had a shot if they had done that. By the time BBX gets going Windows 8 will be out, and, many businesses will look at Windows 8 if they are going to completely have to change platforms.
Too little too late RIM…
Its never to late for any company, they always can gain the market look at what other company did in a past and gain more…