Tag Archives | RIM

BlackBerry Torch: The Initial Verdicts

The first real reviews of RIM’s BlackBerry Torch are in. They make for an interesting contrast, because in many ways the point-by-point conclusions are similar–but there’s no consensus about whether the glass is half full or half empty.

As usual, the last paragraphs of the reviews are concise summaries of the bottom lines in question…

Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal isn’t a raving fan, but he’s pretty upbeat:

Overall, the Torch and the BlackBerry 6 operating system are good products that improve the BlackBerry experience considerably and bring the device closer to its newer rivals.

Joshua Topolsky of Engadget is disappointed:

The Torch seems sluggish, underpowered, and dated from a hardware design standpoint, and BlackBerry 6, despite its new features and polish, still feels woefully behind the curve. To call the Torch the “best BlackBerry ever” wouldn’t be an understatement, but unfortunately for RIM and the faithful, their best isn’t nearly good enough.

Matt Buchanan of Gizmodo is even less impressed:

Maybe RIM’s too big, too entrenched to build the kind of phone that’ll make people want a BlackBerry again. But they could’ve at least given the damn thing a better screen.

But Sascha Segan of PCMag.com says the phone has its place:

The state of the art in Android and Apple phones has vaulted into super-high-res screens, 4G radios, tens of thousands of apps, and glorious 3D games. The BlackBerry Torch doesn’t live in that world: it’s for people who live on e-mail, IM, Facebook and Twitter, for whom typing updates and messages is their number-one priority. For them, the Torch will be a shining light.

Nobody thinks the phone is transcendent–but come to think of it, I’m not sure if there’s ever been a smartphone based on a venerable existing platform that’s been greeted as a great leap forward. At least I can’t think of a Windows Mobile, Symbian, or Palm OS one that changed everything…

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Smartphone Sales: New Stats, and a Recap

Yet another research report shows booming sales of Android smartphones: NPD, which covers the retail market, says that 33 percent of smartphones sold in the US in the second quarter ran Google’s operating system. RIM’s BlackBerries fell to second place, at 28 percent, and Apple’s iPhones had 22 percent of the market.

NPD’s analysis covers only phones, so there are millions of Apple iOS devices–iPod Touches and iPads–that aren’t part of the tally. Except for a few niche products such as Archos’s tablets and the Nook, Android is still a phone OS, not a general-purpose one; that will change in the months to come as Android tablets (and products such as Google TV) arrive.

Each company that does this sort of number-crunching uses its own methodology, and sales patterns for the rest of the world differ wildly from those for the US. So it’s not surprising that different companies are releasing varying rankings. After the jump, a quick visual recap of some recent stats.

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RIM and AT&T: The Love Affair Blossoms

It’s tempting to interpret every move AT&T makes in terms of its relationship with Apple, its status as the exclusive iPhone carrier in the US, and the implications of that exclusivity ending, as it will someday. It’s also dangerous to think that way, because the tea leaves are all too hard to read. Still, one fascinating sidelight of this morning’s BlackBerry Torch launch was the degree to which it was a lovefest between RIM and AT&T.

The first person on stage at this BlackBerry unveiling–the one who got to brandish a Torch in public for the first time–wasn’t a RIM honcho. It was AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph De La Vega. And RIM and AT&T executives handed off between each other for the entire presentation, spending nearly as much time praising each other as they did bragging about the new handset.

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BlackBerry Torch First Impressions: Fresh But Familiar, Indeed

“The toughest thing about success is that you’ve got to keep on being a success.” Irving Berlin supposedly said that, and the quote was on my mind this morning as I attended RIM’s BlackBerry Torch launch in New York.

When Palm and Microsoft were faced with the challenge of fast-forwarding into the iPhone era, they had a perverse advantage: Their current products were so obviously part of smartphones’ past that it would have been riskier to stick with them than to start fresh. Hence Palm’s WebOS (a technical success even though it hasn’t yet shipped in a successful product) and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 (which, whatever it turns out to be, is anything but a Windows Mobile retread).

For RIM, the challenge is indeed tougher. BlackBerry phones are still selling well; their traditional strengths, such as serious e-mail and well-done physical keyboards remain strengths; they’re part of how the world does business. And yet it’s clear that BlackBerry faces a potentially existential threat from iPhone and Android, both of which are slickier, sexier, Webbier, and more modern than any RIM device to date.

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Join Me on Tuesday for Live Coverage of RIM's BlackBerry Event


BlackBerry maker RIM has invited members of the press to an event in New York City next Tuesday at 11am ET. Folks are logically assuming that the company will announce a new touchscreen BlackBerry running BlackBerry OS 6–which would make for some of the year’s biggest smartphone news.

I’ll be in the audience, furiously liveblogging whatever happens as it transpires–and I hope that you’ll be along for the ride. Live Technologizer coverage starts at 11am ET on Tuesday (or–pssst–a few minutes before) at technologizer.com/blackberry. (You can head there now to sign up for a reminder.)

In the meantime, BlackBerry aficionados, feel free to let us know in the comments on this post what you hope next week’s news brings. (I’m hoping for something genuinely exciting–I’d much rather that BlackBerry feels like a vibrant part of smartphones’ future than a distinguished reminder of their past.)

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Another BlackBerry 6 Tease

RIM has posted another video demo of BlackBerry 6, the OS upgrade it says will show up later this summer. As with the earlier one, it looks neat–but it’s presented in the form of a floating screen that isn’t surrounded by a phone, and focuses more on showing cool stuff whipping by then on providing a detailed walkthrough of what’s new.

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BlackBerry Tablet Rumor Roundup

Is BlackBerry Maker RIM working on a tablet? Lots of rumors say so. But so far, it’s hard to construct them into a logical picture of what might be in the works, or even a coherent rationale for RIM getting into the tablet business.

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A First Peek at BlackBerry OS

BlackBerry maker RIM has one of the bigger, more fascinating challenges in the whole world of tech: It makes some of the most successful, beloved devices on the planet, but its aging software platform is a dead end. At its WES 2010 conference today, the company previewed the upcoming BlackBerry 6 OS–due in the third quarter of this year–in a video that was clearly meant more to tantalize than to inform.

We can tell that it looks as much or more like the iPhone (and Android, and WebOS) than the current BlackBerry OS. We see social-media feeds and multimedia features, but only a hint of the modern new WebKit-based browser. We don’t actually get a peek at a phone, but the Minority Report-like floating display has a virtual keyboard rather than plastic keys. (Which I hope and assume doesn’t mean that BlackBerry is giving up on physical keys–seems like the most exciting possible next-generation BlackBerry would still be an awesome phone that happened to have an excellent real keyboard.)

Here’s the video–BlackBerry users, does it leave you excited, apprehensive, or a bit of both?

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Android Proving a Worthy Contender to iPhone, RIM

comScore’s latest numbers show that Google’s Android platform is really beginning to gain some traction in the smartphone market. From the November 2009 to February period, Android took 9 percent of the market, up sharply from 3.8 percent in the previous three month period.

Notable among comScore’s findings is the fact that Android seems to be attracting a different user base than either market-leading RIM or Apple. RIM managed to increase its share to 42.1 percent, while Apple maintained its 25.4 percent share. Instead, Android’s victims are Microsoft (who fell four percent to 15.1%) and Palm (7.2 to 5.4 percent).

Overall, smartphones have shown 21 percent year-over-year growth, verifying that there is still plenty of room for growth in this still somewhat nascent market.

I’ve long said since Verizon’s “iDont” commercials that the Android platform would for the most part not take market share from Apple, and this has proved that theory somewhat. Those on the platform are probably more likely new to smartphones overall, and the open nature of the OS means that the availability of Android phones is much broader (there is now at least one Android-powered phone on every major US cellular provider).

One thing can be said now, I think: Android is indeed a success.

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