BlackBerry’s
year at a glance
George then gave us a history lesson of BlackBerry, from
push emails to applications. RIM created a demand for something that people
didn’t know they needed, then discovered that these are the things that they
couldn’t live without.
George Staikos, Vice President, Web
Technologies, East Asia, RIM
‘While some saw this as an overnight success, RIM knew
otherwise. It was a result of decades of hard work, years of asking ourselves
‘How we could apply science, technology and design in ways that could make
people’s lives better’,’ he added.
He then went on to talk about BlackBerry as a whole,
where he said that exactly one year ago, there were about 50 million BlackBerry
subscribers and now, there are more than 70 million of them. They sold 150
million smartphones up until last year and now, it’s 165 million. This means
that they sold more than 15 million BlackBerry smartphones within a year! He
also said that there were 28 million BlackBerry Messenger users last year and
the figure increased to 50 million BlackBerry Messenger users. He also said that
there are now 1 billion downloads on BlackBerry App World and there are 5
million more downloads every day.
He also reiterates the launch of the BlackBerry 7 OS,
held earlier this year. There are now seven BlackBerry 7 OS based smartphones,
namely the Bold 9900, Torch 9860, Torch 9810, Curve 9360, Curve 9380, Bold 9790
and the Porsche Design P’9981.
George then went on to talk about BlackBerry 7.1. There
will be APIs for NFC to let developer take advantage of the NFC chips in
BlackBerry smartphones. With regards to BBM Social Platform, which API was
opened up about 5 months ago, the first 325 applications that took advantage of
it has already been downloaded more than 60 million times.
‘’We are gaining ground in the app space. Developers are
making more money with BlackBerry. They can do it faster and with greater
discoverability for their applications,’ he added.
BlackBerry
10 – A brand new platform
He then proceeded to announce the BlackBerry 10 platform,
formally known as the BBX platform. BlackBerry 10 will be the official brand
name from now onwards for their next generation platform.
George Staikos announcing BlackBerry 10, the
new name for the BBX platform
‘BlackBerry 10 will power the future generations of our
BlackBerry smartphone and tablets. Our vision is to have a single, converged,
next generation BlackBerry platform, built from the core up, to enable the most
powerful mobile social communications experiences the world have ever seen,’ he
said, in regards to BlackBerry 10.
The BlackBerry 10 platform is based on three fundamental
components, namely the BlackBerry 10 operating system software, the BlackBerry
10 services and the development environment.
The BlackBerry 10 operating system software is a next
generation operating system powering phones, tablets, automobiles and more. It
is said to combine the best of BlackBerry and the best of QNX. George also said
that it connects people, devices, platform and content together.
The BlackBerry 10 services enable full access to the
BlackBerry Cloud, to BBM, BlackBerry Enterprise servers, the BlackBerry
Internet servers, from push to maintenance, BlackBerry security and beyond.
‘BlackBerry 10 is a transformational, new, application
development, environment. The BlackBerry 10 native software development kit
allows you to build new, high performance BlackBerry experiences, the best in
class HTML5 implementation, allows developers to tap into 70 million BlackBerry
smartphones,’ he added.
George then proceed to explain the different levels of
the new BlackBerry platform, which includes making available the most popular
open source platforms as well as the new BlackBerry Cascades framework to allow
developers to build astonishing user experience.
HTML5 will play a major part in BlackBerry 10 as well.
HTML5 is, according to RIM, the obvious choice for modern application
development, it is cross platform, cross-device and George said the BlackBerry
and RIM will is committed to HTML5.
‘HTML5 will be the technology to enable most BlackBerry
developers to rapidly deliver rich, connected applications across a range of
devices. HTML5 is something that BlackBerry has embraced since day 1,’ he
added.
HTML5 will play an important role in the new
BlackBerry framework.
‘Our ambitious plan for BlackBerry 10 is to allow web
developers to also build mobile applications. We are excited about HTML5 and
the opportunity it creates for all of us,’ George said while closing his
BlackBerry 10 presentation.
