BW Communities

A BlackBerry Moment

BW Online Bureau Nov 08, 2014

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><root available-locales="en_US," default-locale="en_US"><static-content language-id="en_US"><![CDATA[All eyes have been on Research In Motion, Canada-based makers of the Blackberrys you fondly fondle everyday to keep in touch with your friends and family and co-workers. That the company is in deep trouble is no secret and you don't need to look far to see chronicles of bad BlackBerry news on every front. The BlackBerry top brass took to the stage at the BlackBerry World developer conference in Orlando, Florida, to showcase whatever they've got on their upcoming BlackBerry 10 operating system and in so doing, convince the world that the company has a bright future, filled with vision, innovation and opportunity. No one expected miracles, but whether the event boosted confidence in the company's ability to deliver in face of aggressive competition from Apple and Samsung, is difficult to gauge. Their stock certainly took a 3 per cent dip, but this is not enough to go by. So, let's see what we've got. First, we have CEO Thorsten Heins delivering his first big public keynote. He doesn't have an enviable job, as the world watches to get a sense of who he is and whether he has it in him to steer the company out of its troubles. Or rather, to reinvent it altogether. Because that's what it needs, even if it is around its existing base of strengths. Questions remain on whether Thorsten Heins can back up what he said in a message to employees when he first took over earlier this year: "we always think ahead" and "We're always innovating" with some action.  It's evident from his keynote that he is thrilled with the direction that BlackBerry 10 is taking and believes firmly that it isn't just another platform. We finally got a glimpse of BlackBerry 10, which took a long time coming.  Meant to be the operating system which will make mini-Playbooks of future BlackBerry smartphones, it's got messaging as its DNA. Actions used when you talk to the device are all natural flicks and wipes and taps. It's got speed and multitasking at its heart and apps work in the background and are easy to access rather than making you exit out of one thing to get to another. Developers are being handed out a free BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha prototype device so they can go develop some apps that will excite users. It has a 4.2-inch screen with a resolution of 1280×768, micro HDMI port for displaying video on a television or monitor. It has Bluetooth and WiFi radios and is cellular ready. But it's not the final device you'll see, which RIM should come out with before October if it wants to survive. On the prototype device, showcased in a video on the net as well, you see a few features that will be part of the final product. One of these is a virtual keyboard (because the device is all touch) that looks like an old style one and still allows for two-thumb dexterity because of the predictive text and swiping and flicking involved which is meant to increase your input speed. There is also an innovative camera which lets you tap anywhere on the screen to take a photo and then lets you go back in time, as it were, to see a frame before and after the photo, just in case someone blinked. These are great touches and the naturalness of the UI is intuitive and impressive. But many of these features exist in current devices and apps to begin with. Admittedly not all satisfyingly in one place, but somewhere out in the wild for sure. An Android app called SwiftKey, which costs next to nothing, adds an alternative keyboard and input to devices and learns what you write, including from your email and SMS. It goes on to predict text most cleverly becoming even faster than Swype (the finger tracing text input) and even voice since that always has errors). Now no one yet does messaging quite like BlackBerry, and if they bake it into the device more and more, it will be a further addiction, but messaging is meanwhile getting more prevalent on competing devices. Although RIM sems to be looking at a system in which information "flows" freely and seamlessly from one usage point to another without the user having to think about it or even about whether he or she is connected or not, it's the timing that matters. The competition is anything but static and RIM has to either move fast or move with impact if it's to regain its place. There's also the question of confusion over the exact target segment in BlackBerry's future. Enterprise is its strength, consumers are its numbers. How one brand is to ride these different segments successfully while all the time standing for one powerful thing, is key to whether a BlackBerry moment can set the stage for many years of growth and success in that cut-throat fast-paced world of smartphones.