RIM rolls out full BlackBerry Mobile Fusion platform

As corporate smartphone users opt for BlackBerry alternatives like the iPhone from Apple Inc. or Google Inc.'s Android-based devices, Research In Motion Ltd. made it clear Tuesday they are all still welcome on BlackBerry networks.

Waterloo, Ont.-based RIM has rolled out the full version of its BlackBerry Mobile Fusion platform, nearly one year after first announcing plans to evolve its Black-Berry Enterprise Service (BES) technology to be compatible with increasingly popular bring-yourown-device policies. The company first launched Mobile Fusion last month along with the release of a critical software update for the PlayBook tablet.

"For businesses and government, managing a mix of mobile devices on any scale is chaotic," Alan Panezic, vice-president of enterprise product management and marketing for RIM, said in a statement.

"BlackBerry Mobile Fusion allows organizations to manage a mixed environment of devices in the most secure, simple, and cost efficient manner possible."

Using a single Web-based console, IT staff will be able to manage any mobile device based on Apple's iOS, Google's Android, RIM's Black-Berry OS as well as the company's highly anticipated, still forthcoming, BlackBerry 10 platform. Additional new features include the ability to support more than one device per user (i.e. an employee's Black-Berry smartphone and iPad tablet) and manage individual applications or pieces of software.

Pricing for Mobile Fusion starts at $99 U.S. per user or $4 U.S. per user per month, though RIM is offering a 60day free trial and said in a release that volume discounts are available. The cost is comparable to current Black-Berry Enterprise Server fees, which start at $99 U.S. per user and also include bulk discounts such as $65.98 U.S. per user with at least 50 users.

Once the mobile device of choice for every member of society's elite (even Barack Obama fought to keep his after being elected U.S. president), high-profile corporate clients such as Dell Inc. and Halliburton Co. have stopped purchasing thousands of BlackBerrys in recent years as RIM has gradually lost share in its core enterprise market.

Thorsten Heins, a 54-year-old former Siemens executive who replaced long-time chief executive tandem Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie as the top BlackBerry boss in January after months of substantial U.S. market share declines, vowed last week to place more focus on rebuilding RIM's waning dominance in the enterprise. The company reported its fifth straight quarter of lower-than-expected earners after markets closed last Thursday.

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Blackberry App Development

BlackBerry Porsche Design P'9981: Harrods titanium edition pictures and hands-on

Porsche Design has made an exclusive one-of-a-kind titanium and carbon fibre version of its BlackBerry Porsche Design P'9981 smartphone for Harrods, and Pocket-lint convinced the Knightsbridge store to let us have a closer look.

Titanium is a material that Todd Wood, head of design at Research In Motion, has previously told us that he wanted to work with and here the titanium gives the phone a more shiny appearance to the matt metal finish of the standard, if you can call it that, BlackBerry Porsche Design P'9981 smartphone.

But it's not just about making the BlackBerry phone shiny. The QWERTY keyboards is now plastic rather than metal and that introduces a lot more black to the front of the phone than in the previous outing.

Around the back and Porsche Design has introduced a carbon fibre back cover that encases the entire rear of the handset. While it looks amazing, we can't help worry that it is likely to reduce the ability to make and receive calls to the phone.

That's because the carbon part of the material actually causes a lot of problems for the antenna and does a really good job of blocking incoming radio signals.

We know this useless fact because RIM has previously told Pocket-lint that the carbon fibre back plate found on the standard Bold 9900 isn't carbon fibre at all, but a material that - for all intents and purposes - is carbon fibre but without the carbon element. Phones just don't like carbon.
Still you shouldn't let that small detail put you off.

Due to be sold at auction with the money going to charity, the limited-edition phone hasn't yet had a price put on it by Harrods.

Oh and if you are wondering why the black glove? The sales rep from Harrods was so nervous that not only would he only hold the phone above carpet in case he dropped it, but he insisted on wearing the fetching black glove so as not to get it greasy. Bless.

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Blackberry App Development

Best Apps for BlackBerry, April 2012

Check out the latest and greatest in apps for your BlackBerry with our monthly app roundup.

Call Reminder Notes

Never again forget that thing you needed to tell that guy.

Call Reminder Notes is a handy little app that allows you to set a little note to appear the next time a specified contact calls you (or you call them). For instance, if you want to tell your friend holidaying in North Korea that you found her favourite chilli sauce on sale (if I had a dollar for every time that’s happened...) but don’t really need to interrupt her stay, you can have that information appear when she calls you upon her return.

Additionally, you can assign any note to multiple contacts. So, if you need to remind, say, all of your housemates that there isn’t any schnitzel left, you can have it appear each time you call one of them. Once you hang up from the call, the reminder is automatically cleared and an optional after-call window allows you to add a new reminder, create a calendar event or add a note to their contact in your phone book, which is rather handy in itself.

The app is a little expensive at US$4.99, but if you’re constantly forgetting to tell people semi-important information, it should be of great use to you. Call Reminder Notes is also available on Android.

US$4.99 > Finmouse > Link

Ziptrix Battle!

There are surprisingly few local multiplayer games in the mobile world, so it’s great to see such a classic given that most rare of treatments. Ziptrix is yet another trademark-friendly Tetris clone, but it gives it a new spin by adding the multiplayer-over-Bluetooth battle mode, where you earn power-ups that hinder the opponent.

I was once quite addicted to Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine on the Mega Drive, so it’s nice (or maybe dangerous) to have a Puyo Puyo-style block faller in my hands again.

US99c > Joyco Games > Link

Tank Recon 3D for PlayBook

The title of this app probably gives you most of the information you need. You drive a tank in a 3D environment on a PlayBook.

Further to this, though, you get two campaigns with four missions each (so the game could be longer) where you’ll battle 14 different enemy types, using six different power-ups. It’s challenging, but it comes with three difficulty levels so should suit most. Solid controls and the option of your own in-game music make it a winner.

US$4.99 > Lone Dwarf Games > Link

PinShare for BBM

With the release of the BBM SDK, we can start to expect more and more BBM-based apps to emerge. PinShare for BBM is one of the first off the rank, providing a sort of Chat Roulette without the randomised connections or unwelcome advances.

You are given a profile photo and description of the person, allowing you to decide if they’re worthy of your keystrokes and saving you from having to diverge your PIN to them. Once you both approve, you then chat through BBM, just as if they were a real friend.

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Blackberry App Development

Twitter BlackBerry App Updated

 BlackBerry owners on Monday got a Twitter app update that offers some parity to Twitter’s iOS and Android apps.

The new Twitter for BlackBerry makes it easier to share links to web pages directly from the browser and automatically shortens links you send from your phone.

In addition, you can upload photos from your device’s camera to pic.twitter.com or when writing tweets. Another feature lets you connect your Twitter account to BlackBerry Messenger so you can share your latest tweet as a BBM Personal Message.

Research In Motion and Twitter introduced the original version of the app in April 2010. Features for that version included notification of @ mentions, real-time BlackBerry push of Twitter direct messages and camera and photo gallery integration.

The update comes after Apple’s iOS 5 launched last October with native Twitter support, including the ability to seamlessly tweet photos and tweet directly from websites. Twitter also updated its iPhone and Android apps in February.

The updates included the reintroduction of the swipe shortcut. That move allows users to reply to, favorite and share tweets — as well as retweet posts and view other user profiles — all without leaving their own timelines. The updated iPhone and Android apps also both introduced a feature designed to expedite the process of finding friends on Twitter via existing email and phone contact lists.

BlackBerry’s update, which comes more than a month later, is reflection of the platform’s shrinking market share. RIM ended January with a market share of 15.2% in the U.S., according to comScore. Compare that to 48.6% for Google’s Android OS and 29.5% for Apple’s iOS.

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Blackberry App Development

Marketing lesson for BlackBerry-maker RIM

RIM’s slice of the worldwide smartphone market was 15.2% in the last quarter, down from 17.2% in the previous period

SAN FRANCISCO: For Apple, it's "Think Different." For RIM, how about "Be Heard?"
That's the advice of one former marketer at Apple, a company known for its advertising genius and ability to convince e-mail addicts weaned on the BlackBerry's Chiclet keyboard that typing on the iPhone's glass is cooler.

With RIM's share of the global smartphone market continuing to slide, Bloomberg asked a couple of marketing execs who worked with Apple: What would you do to freshen up RIM's dusty public image?

"There are some very simple marketing and strategic options for RIM, and it's certainly not too late," Alec Marshall, who was a marketing executive at Apple from 2003 to 2008, wrote in an e-mail. "When I arrived at Apple, we had 6 per cent market share. Things are a little different now."

Different indeed. According to ComScore, RIM's slice of the worldwide smartphone market was 15.2 per cent in the last quarter, down from 17.2 per cent in the previous period. Meanwhile, Apple's share grew to 29.5 per cent from 28.1 percent during the same period.

RIM's "product positioning should be simple and elegant," said Marshall, who is now a marketing vice president for app developer Eyecon Resources. "They should learn from Apple circa 1997 and simplify their lineup." Some of the most recent mobile-phone models from RIM are the BlackBerry Torch 9850, the BlackBerry Torch 9860 and the BlackBerry Touch 9900 (that's Touch, not Torch).

In its continued advertising blitz, Apple puts the spotlight on some of the innovative things you can do with its mobile products using apps, Marshall wrote. RIM's greatest edge was its mastery of messaging tools, which it has ignored recently in marketing. (The phones also have superior battery life, but that's probably a hard aspect to advertise.)

RIM lost focus when it attempted to mimic the app stores popularized by Apple and Google's Android, he wrote. "Once they choose a tactic, the messaging should be simple," said Marshall. "Something like, 'Be heard.'"

A RIM spokeswoman referred a request for comment to statements made by Thorsten Heins, the company's president and chief executive officer, on yesterday's earnings call. Heins has expressed optimism that a marketing chief could give RIM a shot in the arm, and he said the search continues. Keith Pardy, RIM's former chief marketing officer, left a year ago, and Brian Wallace, a former RIM vice president of marketing, left a few months after that to join Samsung Telecommunications America.

RIM may be better off forgetting about advertising its phones to consumers altogether, said Sean Crotty, who worked as an evangelist for Apple in the early-1990s, in an e-mail. Still, RIM should play up the BlackBerry as a communication device, not as an Angry Birds player, he wrote.

"BlackBerry wins as a pure business tool," said Crotty, who is now an executive at consulting firm TJL. "The RIM designers don't have the same consumer 'wow' focus in their DNA. RIM should stick with what it has always been good at -- making the best business-only communication tool."

Steve Hayden, who worked on Apple's iconic "1984″ commercial for the Macintosh and retired as vice chairman for advertising firm Ogilvy in January, is less optimistic about the BlackBerry.

"If I knew how to save the BlackBerry, I would be talking to RIM right now," he said in a phone interview. Hayden's advice: RIM should consider shuttering its hardware units, similar to how Jobs killed the Newton, printers and other divisions when he returned to Apple in 1997. "When you look at Apple in '96, they were pretty close to extinct," he said.

Perhaps RIM's most promising road to growth is in software, Hayden said. RIM said in November that it was working on tools called Mobile Fusion for securing iPhones and Androids for use with corporate data.

"There is some hope in Mobile Fusion," Hayden said. "It's got to be a software offering rather than just their steady focus on hardware. They haven't done too well on the hardware front." From there, RIM might be able to spend its ad dollars on presenting itself as a friendly developer of corporate tools, he said.

It might not be as "killer" as commercials with surfer dudes using BlackBerry Messenger, but as RIM CEO Heins said, "substantial change is what RIM needs."

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Blackberry App Development

BlackBerry App World has over 70,000 apps

The surge in apps within RIM’s BlackBerry App World could have been the recent promotion that gave developers a free 16GB PlayBook for every new app they submitted. This saw over over 1,500 app submissions and over 6,600 new developers.

Last month RIM stated the BlackBerry App World had over 60,000 apps, saw over 174 million apps downloaded every month, 6 million app downloads per day, over 2 billion app downloads to date, plus that it’s available in 164 markets around the world. Yesterday RIM’s Developer Relations team held a HTML5 hackathon at Pace University in New York City and declared some new stats for the App World.

Nothing groundbreaking, but glad to see progress. Apparently RIM now has over 70,000 available apps. over 2 billion app downloads to date, seeing 6 million downloads per day and growing, 177 million app downloads every month. Good stats for a company some are calling dead. RIM has always stated they are looking to have quality apps versus quantity.

Comparing to other app stores, Apple’s App Store has over 585,000 available apps, the Google Play Store has over the 450,000 available apps, Microsoft’s Windows Marketplace just crossed over the 70,000 app mark… so it looks like Windows Phone and BlackBerry are tied for 3rd place.

RIM is preparing to reveal their upcoming BlackBerry 10 OS in May at BlackBerry World. This will – hopefully – bring a new life to the company. In addition, their BlackBerry 10 smartphones are still on track to be released “in the latter part of 2012.”

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Blackberry App Development

BlackBerry maker to focus on business customers

TORONTO (AP) — 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.

"We can't do everything ourselves, but we can do what we're good at," RIM CEO Thorsten Heins said.

RIM has had limited success trying to enter consumer markets in recent years, particularly with high-end devices that sport touch screens popular with consumers.

Heins said a turnaround required "substantial change."

"We believe that BlackBerry cannot succeed if we tried to be everybody's darling and all things to all people," Heins said. "Therefore, we plan to build on our strength."

Heins, who joined RIM four years ago and was most recently its chief operating officer, replaced co-CEOs Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis in January after the company lost tens of billions in market value. Lazaridis founded the company, and Balsillie had joined in its early years.

RIM said Thursday that Balsillie has resigned from its board after 20 years with the company. David Yach, chief technology officer for software, and Jim Rowan, chief operating officer for global operations, also are leaving.

The company said it was undergoing a comprehensive strategic review. Heins said he was open to selling the company, but "it is not the main direction we are pursuing right now."

The Canadian company has long dominated the corporate smartphone market. Its BlackBerrys are known for their security and reliability as email devices. President Barack Obama even refused to part with his BlackBerry after he took office.

RIM has sought to expand its appeal to consumers, but it has had trouble because the phones aren't perceived to be as sexy as its chief competitors. RIM has been counting on improvements with its forthcoming BlackBerry 10 system, but that has faced multiple delays. BlackBerrys also lag iPhones or Android phones when it comes to running third-party applications. Touch-screen models that lack physical keyboards have largely flopped.

For that reason, BlackBerrys are even losing ground in the business world, as employees demand iPhones or Android devices over BlackBerrys.

Apple sold 37 million iPhones in the last three months of 2011 — more than what RIM shipped in the past three quarters combined. RIM shipped 11.1 million BlackBerrys in the latest quarter, which ended March 3.

RIM also bombed in its efforts to produce a tablet computer to compete with Apple's iPad. Among other things, the PlayBook received negative reviews because it launched without an email program and the popular messaging service BlackBerry Messenger. In December, the tablets that originally cost $500 were selling for $200, below the cost of making them.

BGC Financial analyst Colin Gillis said it's a positive development that RIM is going to focus on its corporate clients and lower-end consumers.

"They are conceding the high-end consumer market with all these services that are wrapped around the platform," Gillis said. "At least there's some reality here. Are they going to compete against iTunes? No way."

Peter Misek, an analyst at Jefferies & Co. in New York, said RIM should have recognized that it is niche player and lost the battle with Apple three years ago. Misek said the company should have looked at partnering with other companies last year rather than now.

When he took the CEO job in January, Heins said a drastic change in strategy was not needed. He said Thursday that he changed his mind after conducting his "own reality check on where the entire company really is."

RIM announced the changes as it announced quarterly results that fell short of Wall Street expectations.

Net loss was $125 million, or 24 cents a share, in the fiscal fourth quarter. This compares with $934 million, or $1.78 per share, a year ago.

After excluding one-time items, adjusted income was 80 cents per share, a penny short of expectations from analysts polled by FactSet.

Revenue fell 25 percent to $4.2 billion from $5.6 billion. Analysts were expecting $4.5 billion.

For the full fiscal year, RIM earned $1.2 billion, or $2.22 a share, on revenue of $18.4 billion. That compares with net income of $3.4 billion, or $6.34 a share, on revenue of $19.9 billion in fiscal 2011.

In extended trading after the results came out, RIM shares fell 33 cents, or 2.4 percent, to $13.40. During the regular session, the stock increased 6 cents to close at $13.73.

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Blackberry App Development