BlackBerry maker to focus on business customers
Struggling BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd. said Thursday that it plans to return its focus to its corporate customers after failing to compete with flashier, consumer-oriented phones such as Apple's iPhone and models that run Google's Android software.
The shift in strategy came with a management shakeup that includes longtime executive Jim Balsillie leaving the board and severing ties with a company he helped build and later see decline.
RIM said it will focus its consumer efforts on targeted offerings that tap the company's strengths. That includes devices that employees will want to buy on their own and bring to the corporate environment. The company was exploring partnerships and other opportunities for consumer products that aren't deemed central. Those products could include software and features that are then incorporated into RIM's own offerings. Read more...
RIM pushes BlackBerry 10 kit out to thousands of devs on 1 May
Attendees travelling to Orlando for BlackBerry World will get their hands on alpha-release hardware as RIM seeks to seed the developer community ahead of a commercial launch.
The hardware won't be the finished article, but RIM reckons it's close enough for devs to start making applications. The Canadian firm will be handing out several thousand devices to developers attending BlackBerry World in a move described as "unprecedented". Read more...
Coming soon from BlackBerry: 5 things to look forward to
These are dark days for Research In Motion (RIM) and its BlackBerry brand...or at least dim ones.
The Canadian company is struggling with an increasingly negative market perception, shrinking customer loyalty as long-time BlackBerry users move on, and stiff competition from rivals, including Apple, Google and Microsoft, among other things.
But that doesn't mean it should all be doom and gloom for RIM right now. Here are five reasons why current BlackBerry users and others interested in the brand and its future should remain optimistic in the coming months. Read more...
RIM offers free PlayBook to attract Android developers
Research in Motion is trying to woo developers by giving a free BlackBerry PlayBook tablet to coders who port their Android application for its BlackBerry Tablet OS.
The promotion, announced on Twitter by Alec Saunders, RIM's vice president for developer relations, comes as RIM struggles to generate interest in the PlayBook in the face of sluggish sales.
In the U.S., the company put the tablet on sale again this week, slashing the price of its 16 GB PlayBook to $199, down from an original retail price of $499. The 32 GB model is now $249, down from $599, and the 64GB model now retails for $299, according to the company's website. Read more...
RIM collapsing as Apple iPhone wins the enterprise
As speculation turns to iPhone 5 comes news that Research In Motion (RIM) is dead. Sure, this might sound harsh but the company's move to replace its leadership seems unlikely to bring it back from the brink. Apple [AAPL] has unleashed forces RIM has been unable to match.
Fall of the giant
What’s the news? Company co-CEO's, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie have stepped down. RIM now has a new CEO, ex-COO, Thorsten Heins. The fightback -- such as it is -- begins with two new model phones scheduled for introduction later this year, hopefully.
These moves reflect declining BlackBerry sales, declining satisfaction levels, decline across the board at the world's once leading smartphone company.
Think back and you'll recall a time when RIM devices seemed to exude rubber-clad cool: if you didn't have a BlackBerry you wanted one, and business users who did possess them loved them so much they'd work in bed with them, creating armies of BlackBerry widows in the process.
Apple made your widows smile
Apple's focus on users meant those BlackBerry widows ended up with their own electronic gadget to use at bedtime, and when their business-focused husbands saw what they were doing, they wanted a little iAction too. Read more...
RIM: BlackBerry 10 is fine, delays are down to chip ship slip
RIM has strenuously denied that hiccups in development are delaying the launch of phones based on its new OS, citing chip deliveries as the problem.
In an explicit statement RIM's CEO Mike Lazaridis says the Boy Genius Report blog, reporting problems with the upcoming BlackBerry 10* OS, is "inaccurate and uninformed". He then reiterates that delays to the launch of handsets using Blackberry 10 are caused by RIM's decision to wait for a dual-core processor with integrated LTE (4G), rather than any problems getting the software working.
The accusation that things were not well with the software was posted here, citing an inside source from RIM. The blog recognises the seriousness of the accusation, but claims the information comes from "one of our most trusted sources" and that it spells the end for RIM. Read more...
Amazon, MS and Nokia sniff around RIM
Buyers including Amazon, Microsoft and Nokia have expressed some interest in hoovering up the remains of Research in Motion, as it reeled from one disaster to another this year.
But the Canadian firm is determined to sort itself out, people with knowledge of the situation told Reuters.
Etail giant Amazon hired an investment bank over the summer to look into a potential marriage with RIM, but it didn't make any formal proposals.
Meanwhile, RIM's board are still keen on letting co-chief execs and chairmen Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie do their best to turn the business around and recoup some of its massive share losses. Read more...
RIM renames BBX as BlackBerry 10 after trademark dispute
Research In Motion has rebranded its next generation mobile platform as BlackBerry 10, after its use of the BBX brand ran into a trademark dispute in the U.S.
RIM said in a statement on Wednesday that it had announced at its DevCon Asia conference in Singapore a new brand name for its next generation mobile platform for smartphones and tablets, which will bring the best of the BlackBerry and QNX platforms to customers and partners.
"The BlackBerry 10 name reflects the significance of the new platform and will leverage the global strength of the BlackBerry brand while also aligning perfectly with RIM's device branding," RIM said. Read more...
After trademark loss, RIM renames BBX OS to BlackBerry 10
A court in the U.S. has barred Research In Motion from using the BBX name at the company's Asian DevCon conference this week in Singapore, after a software company, Basis International, filed for a temporary restraining order in a trademark dispute. The BBX mark is identical to the mark which RIM is allegedly using to present its BBX product, observed the United States District Court for the District of New Mexico on Tuesday. Although Basis and RIM are not direct competitors, their respective BBX products are highly related and target the same class of consumers, consisting of business application software developers, it added.
RIM did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but in a tweet later it said the official name of the forthcoming new OS is now BlackBerry 10. Read more...
RIM offers $99 PlayBook to employees, Best Buy stops selling them
So, you’re looking to boost interest in a nice piece of hardware that’s been overlooked because of a competitor’s product? Just cut its price by 60%, like RIM has done with the BlackBerry PlayBook. Still not satisfied with the results? Why not get the people who work for you to help evangelize the darn thing and get as many out into the wild as you can.
That’s got to be what RIM is thinking, dangling $99 PlayBook tablets to its employees just in time for the biggest gift-giving season of the year. Pick up a slate for your mom and dad, the kids, or even your co-workers for the big staff holiday party. Read more...
Developers welcome RIM’s BBX roadmap
Developers at the BlackBerry DevCon in San Francisco on Tuesday gave Research In Motion high marks for laying out a clear operating system strategy and standing by its PlayBook tablet.
RIM plans to consolidate its PlayBook, smartphones, and even embedded systems under BBX, a single operating system based on the QNX OS, co-CEO Mike Lazaridis told a packed keynote session at the conference on Tuesday. Though the company gave no details about future QNX-based phones or a new version of the tablet, nor a commercial release date for an updated PlayBook OS that it introduced as a beta, attendees were happy to see a firm technology plan.
The BBX OS will be the foundation of the company's software platforms for the future, along with BlackBerry Cloud Services. Developers will be able to choose RIM's native SDK and open-source tools, or the HTML5 Web standard and RIM's WebWorks, to build apps on top of that foundation. Read more...
RIM hopes to distract punters with free pretties
RIM is to hand out free apps to appease its beleaguered customers, along with free technical support so next time the network collapses a human being can tell you you're screwed.
The free apps include SIMS 3 and N.O.V.A as well as the aforementioned Bejeweled and a dozen other time-wasting distractions. They'll be available free from App World, for a month, starting Wednesday. The free tech support is also limited to a month, or a free month's extension to those already paying for it, and you'll have to apply to get it.
Along with the offer we also received RIM's official description of the outage that took down BlackBerry communications and web access around the world last week:
Many customers experienced service interruptions and delays over a period of approximately 3 days in Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa, 1.5 days in Latin America and Canada, and 1 day in the United States. Read more...
RIM shows off tap-to-share feature for NFC BlackBerrys
RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie has demoed a contactless content-sharing system running on NFC-enabled BlackBerry smartphones.
NFC, or near-field communications, is a short-range wireless technology that enables a device to transmit data to a reader. Uses for NFC include contactless ticketing and payments.
RIM's contactless sharing system, called BlackBerry Tag, will be rolled out with the next OS update to its BlackBerry 7 OS, the company said. It has not given a specific launch date - noting only that the update is "coming soon". Read more...
PlayBook in trouble, if not dead, says analyst
Research in Motion's PlayBook looks to be in trouble, as it appears that the smartphone maker has stopped production of the tablet and is actively considering getting out of the business, says Collins Stewart semiconductor analyst John Vihn.
"We believe [RIM] has stopped production of its PlayBook and is actively considering exiting the tablet market," Vihn wrote in a note to investors. "Additionally, our due diligence indicates that RIM has canceled development of additional tablet projects."
Vihn noted that Quanta Computer recently laid off workers at one factory that manufactures the PlayBook.
RIM officials did not respond to a request to comment on Vihn's note. Read more...