Light at the end of the tunnel
If you’ve read my previous post, I had second thoughts about BB10 making it, especially since it is launching after the holiday season. It has all its eggs in the BB10 basket which means that if this ship goes down, RIM goes down along with it. But the market dynamics seem to be in favor of RIM.
One, Windows hasn’t established firm footing yet and still dwindling at #3 which means there is room for RIM to usurp. Second, BYOD is causing a lot of headaches for the IT departments. How do you ensure security while letting the users use their own device — this has been the moot question. With the BB10 features such as BB Hub, Work and Balance, this issue might be addressed. These features keep the work and personal life separate and thus easy to secure.
Third, all the major US carriers — ATT, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint have decided to carry the BB10 line. And last but not the least; the world is looking for THAT smartphone which will do everything. This is BB10’s chance to showcase features which Apple, Google and Windows haven’t thought of — yet.
I am different!
“In building BlackBerry 10, we set out to create a truly unique mobile computing experience that constantly adapts to your needs. Our team has been working tirelessly to bring our customers innovative features combined with a best in class browser, a rich application ecosystem, and cutting-edge multimedia capabilities. All of this will be integrated into a user experience — the BlackBerry Flow — that is unlike any smartphone on the market today. Thanks to our strong partnerships with global carriers and a growing ecosystem of developers, we believe our customers will have the best experience possible with BlackBerry 10. We are looking forward to getting BlackBerry 10 in the hands of our customers around the world.”
Thorsten Heins, CEO of RIM
Other unique features which set the BB10 apart — the new OS lets users transition between various activities without having to return to a home screen and completely switch apps. Users will be able to ‘glance’ at apps that are running in the background by swiping Windows and menus from the side. A paradigm that’s all about the flow. With the BB10 camera, users will be able to go back in time to select the best shot even if it happened before the shutter was pressed.
As mentioned earlier, security is one of the key features and towards this effort there is a list of 106 passwords which the company does not let you use. These are also called banned passwords which include words like batman, freedom and iloveyou.
BB10 app world gains momentum
BlackBerry 10 is only a half-month away from launching, and RIM just recently hosted two Port-a-Thon events to encourage developers to submit their games and apps for BlackBerry 10, while offering $100 for any app approved to the store. Naturally, the $100 incentive seemed to work, since 15,000 apps were submitted over the course of just over 36 hours. The first developers submitting between two and five approved apps were promised a free PlayBook, while those writing more than five approved apps were entered into a random drawing to receive a BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha device. RIM knows it cannot compete with Apple and Google but it aims to target a certain demographic with its app libraries – the ‘hyper connected multitasker’ who needs to get the job done.
