BlackBerry 10 Preview Looks Positive 122
An anonymous reader writes "The Register has a BlackBerry 10 preview up. They say, 'BlackBerry users have a love-hate relationship with their phones. The devices were often forced upon users rather than chosen. At the same time, the handhelds were the most usable and useful communications gadgets you could put in your pocket.' The preview is surprisingly positive, and it goes on to look at BB10's Hub/notifications feature, which they call 'utilitarian' and efficient compared to Windows Phones, which are more about 'style and novelty' whilst being 'a bit limiting.' BlackBerry's implementation may actually improve the system, rather than detracting from it. With BlackBerry providing a QT environment (compatible with Sailfish, which we discussed earlier) and RIM having managed to maintain BB's 3rd place in the mobile OS market, there may a chance for real three-way competition between QT, Android and iOS in the mobile market."
GLHF, fingers crosed for QT (Score:5, Insightful)
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What matters is: If I develop a mobile application; where will I have a big enough audience to justify it. In the next year, Android will have 70% or more of the market; iOS will have about 20%. BlackBerry will have about 5% and Tizen/Bada also likely about 5%. If Jolla can make even 3% market share then overall, I can address 8% of the market by writing for QT. This is enough to actually be commercially worthwhile.
Everything else will be below 2% (see the attached article). That just isn't worth b
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People with android handset do not buy apps.
That's about the geographical market, not about the platform. Android's early popularity stemmed from regions like China where Apple is also finding difficulty in selling apps.
China has its own Macworld/iWorld conference and plenty of iPhone fever, but the paid-download app market appears to still be maturing there. A new report from Shanghai-based analyst firm Stenvall Skoeld claims that the Chinese version of the iOS App Store accounted for 18 percent of total downloads in the second quarter, but just 3 percent of revenue.
China is Apple's fastest growing market, while Android is growing faster in regions with a strong history of paid software purchases. The most recent App Annie data suggests revenue/app for Android is rising, while the equivalent for Apple is falling. In other words, markets are normalising as you'd expect them to.
Enjoy the iOS income
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People with android handset do not buy apps.
That's about the geographical market, not about the platform. Android's early popularity stemmed from regions like China where Apple is also finding difficulty in selling apps.
China has its own Macworld/iWorld conference and plenty of iPhone fever, but the paid-download app market appears to still be maturing there. A new report from Shanghai-based analyst firm Stenvall Skoeld claims that the Chinese version of the iOS App Store accounted for 18 percent of total downloads in the second quarter, but just 3 percent of revenue.
China is Apple's fastest growing market, while Android is growing faster in regions with a strong history of paid software purchases. The most recent App Annie data suggests revenue/app for Android is rising, while the equivalent for Apple is falling. In other words, markets are normalising as you'd expect them to.
Enjoy the iOS income while you can, but don't get dependent on it.
Keep telling yourself that. People in all regions using android are not buying apps. It is an "online" cultural issue where people think "open source" means that everything should "free" including third party apps. It has nothing to do countries.
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China is Apple's fastest growing market, while Android is growing faster in regions with a strong history of paid software purchases. The most recent App Annie data suggests revenue/app for Android is rising, while the equivalent for Apple is falling. In other words, markets are normalising as you'd expect them to.
Enjoy the iOS income while you can, but don't get dependent on it.
Keep telling yourself that. People in all regions using android are not buying apps. It is an "online" cultural issue where people think "open source" means that everything should "free" including third party apps. It has nothing to do countries.
What are you smoking? The people who are actually buying Android phones have no clue about "open source." You call yourself a geek? What are you doing here? You need to realize the 99% of the non-geek population of this planet never heard of "open source." You need to go out more, socialize, get to know the rest of the world ;)
You can't make money on Android and assume nobody else can. But the trend is changing, even here where I live. Blackberry is still very strong, but the growing upper-middle class id
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So write it for Android, then take the 20 minutes to repackage it for BB10. http://developer.blackberry.com/android/ [blackberry.com]
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According to the press releases from Digia, Android will be a tier one Qt platform "soon", and given how bad writing native apps for Android currently is, it might well become the toolkit of choice for Android development too.
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given how bad writing native apps for Android currently is
How bad is it, and what's so bad about it?
I'm an Android (and other platform) developer, and don't really see much difference in difficulty writing for any of the current main mobile OSs.
I don't consider myself particularly highly skilled, but I make a living, and even absolute beginners can block out surprisingly complete software with App Inventor.
http://appinventor.mit.edu/ [mit.edu]
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Java is garbage. It's a PITA to write and debug and it DEVOURS RAM. Dalvik just makes it worse. You can, quite literally, do the same app native on iOS and Windows Phone for a half to a quarter of the RAM.
If Java were any good, it would not have been abandoned by every desktop platform and basically every smartphone platform.
Qt on ARM is looking to be the future for mobile OSes and the added benefit is that Qt is pretty much available for every desktop platform including legacy systems like OS/2.
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Abandoned by every smartphone platform except the one that holds a majority market share.
Correlation is not causation.
Android is popular because there are cheap Android phones available. The figures show most purchasers don't even download apps or access the internet.
Android is the most popular smartphone OS despite the fact that it has a Java-like development system, not because of it.
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The parent poster is the one that made the claim that there was a correlation/causation relationship.
But a different one. His argument that most desktop and smartphone platforms have abandoned it is one of platform makers and developers making a conscious decision on Java itself. That's a perfectly reasonable argument.
Your relationship of marketshare of a single platform that has a Java like language to the number of users is obviously bogus. Bogus because the overwhelming majority of their users don't even know what Java is. And because they are making their decision on lots of other factors, chiefly pric
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Are you seriously trying to defend the claim that Android has been abandoned by Google and all developers? Because that is what the OP is claiming.
He made no such claim. Nor did I. You're beyond grasping at straws.
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If Java were any good, it would not have been abandoned by every desktop platform and basically every smartphone platform.
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Exactly. That's not what you said.
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Java is garbage.
Bat Java has its garbage collector!
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If you only go with that variable, you're in for a bad surprise.
What also matters is if the platform has cheapstakes (Android) or spenders (iOS). It doesn't matter if Android has 70% of the market if only 5% of the users buy apps vs iOS with 20% of the market but 40% of the users who buy apps.
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You don't follow news on mobile much do you?
BB10 has an android app player. Also I can't remember the exact number but BlackBerry made a list of the top X apps in mobile and will have them. Not sure what more you want. Android app player should cover having the 120 fart app options if you really want them.
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Now we'll have to see if they have a slider with a decent size touchscreen. The full keyboard is nice but the screen on my BB is too small to make using the thing worthwhile.
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Now we'll have to see if they have a slider with a decent size touchscreen. The full keyboard is nice but the screen on my BB is too small to make using the thing worthwhile.
Their first flagship BB10 phone has a decent-size touch-screen (with no keyboard, not even a sliding one).
If you want a keyboard, you'll have to wait, or you'll have to go to Android. There are a number Android phone models that have keyboards and touchscreens combined, it's just that those types of phones are not very popular, both sliding ones and non-sliding ones.
For instance, my Motorola XPRT World phone looks just like an old Blackberry phone (with a slightly larger screen but no sliding keyboard), and
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I think the lack of popularity is caused by not offering flagship models with flagship capabilities as sliders. The latest and greatest personal phone is always a big touch screen.
On the flip side businesses generally want a BB with a company run BES behind it for company issue phones. Even if your company was willing to issue Androids there aren't many android sliders.
Issue a BB slider with a large touch screen, a hi res camera, full app support, 4G LTE, lots of memory, fully loaded feature set, and that i
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It is the playbook one.
Re:The App Dilemma (Score:5, Informative)
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That "massive leg-up" had roughly zero positive impact on PlayBook sales.
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Used PB's can be had for cheap. I am typing this on one - does the job just fine.
Looks to me that RIM has learned from this and wait with the BB10 release until the product is more together.
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Not so great? It didn't have email or calendar! I mean, WebOS had THAT and it was a flop.
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The recent licensing change might disagree... (Score:2)
The recent licensing change might disagree...
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/11/15/2218230/google-targets-android-fragmentation-with-updated-terms-for-sdk [slashdot.org]
Google wants to avoid fragmentation, and a version of the OS only capable of running version 2.3 applications isn't going to make them happy to have it called Android.
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Good thing that Blackberry's OS isn't called Android.
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It's also an assumption that BB's android compatibility will forever remain at Gingerbread.
Gingerbread was a stable baseline to develop a compatibility layer for QNX in time for the playbook. But given the delays of BB10 , it's fair to say they've had other development priorities. I'd expect a Jelly Bean refresh late next year after they're actually shipping handsets and as more apps actually demand Android 4.x.
The GGP claimed an "Android runtime" (Score:2)
The GGP claimed an "Android runtime". They used the licensed trademark to claim it. So did the article.
To address your point on it being 2.3: no mobile phone vendor who wants to sell the next handset, and no mobile carrier who wants to "let" you opt into a new 24 month contract 18 months into your current 2 year contract is going to be stupid enough to update the version of the OS to the latest version when they can instead use it as part of the hook to get you to buy into the newer handset/contract.
The on
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Getting Android apps onto a Playbook is a pain in the arse, so much so that if BB10 uses the same method they may as well leave it out as a feature.
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FYI: The link references apps by Handster. They repackage Android software for other developers. There are other ISVs with Android apps on App World as well.
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Every one I've got on here I had to sideload, sadly. I'm hoping for more native apps next year as the Playbook is getting a BB10 makeover and hardware-wise it's a good bit of kit.
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Not so much of a dilemma. They could adopt Android, and port their own apps to it. In exchange, it will mean they'll have access to, not just the Android on their hardware, but Android phones all over the world, a market hundreds of times bigger. This way, they can make their own hardware and software, two sources of money, which they can bundle for a reduced cost and rejuvenate the BlackBerry brand.
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Not so much of a dilemma. They could adopt Android, and port their own apps to it. In exchange, it will mean they'll have access to, not just the Android on their hardware, but Android phones all over the world, a market hundreds of times bigger. This way, they can make their own hardware and software, two sources of money, which they can bundle for a reduced cost and rejuvenate the BlackBerry brand.
This. They could even make it go both ways, still release dedicated Blackberry phones, running latest Android versions plus their own UI on top of that. Have their own phones run premium versions of their apps, and sell basic versions on Google Play that run on all Android devices. Call it Business Android, or whatever.
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Sure if you're writing a fart app. Anything of higher quality takes far more than a week.
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You know how long it takes to create an "app"? About a week. You can always catch up because it takes minimal investment to get an app.
You are the guy getting all the Windows App bounties; aren't you?
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The problem is Blackberry are so far behind in the app race it is nearly impossible to catch up. Smartphone users have spoken and essentially said they want apps and the ability to customize their phone via apps.
Have you actually looked at these apps, the majority are so pisspoor I marvel that the writers have the chutzpah to offer them up for sale/download/whatever in the first instance.
The previous Blackberry OS had apps, but most of them were overpriced and provided little function.
Here, as the (reluctant) owner of a Blackberry for just over a year now, I wholly agree, but I refer you to the majority of the android/iphone apps out there, there isn't much of a difference betwixt their quality and that of the Blackberry ones. The question you have to really have to ask yourself is, 'do I need any of these?' I c
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The problem is Blackberry are so far behind in the app race it is nearly impossible to catch up.
Apps are overrated. Most people don't buy many, and few really care which free apps they amuse themselves with when they are bored.
The number of high value apps that an app store really needs to have to be 'competitive' is in then 10s not the 10s of thousands.
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3rd place? (Score:5, Funny)
Hah. 3rd place in the mobile OS market is kind of like 3rd place in the Superbowl. They don't even get to show up for the game.
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When 3rd place is 4% of the market and falling, yes, it is irrelevant.
And Linux *is* pretty much irrelevant from a business point of view on the desktop, if that's what you mean. But it (via Android) was 70% of smartphone sales last quarter. It also has 60%+ market share of web servers, and runs on about 95% of networked TVs and BD players. So actually, if you look at market share of "connected devices" it's solidly in 1st, and pulling away.
But I guess RIM has that Playbook in the tablet market to save t
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"Every chance"? Heh. No, not really.
Even iOS is actually small compared to the overall marketshare of Android. And that's because it's a single manufacturer trying to push its own OS in the days of smartphones largely dependent on their app ecosystem, etc to thrive.
And why did Android come out of nowhere to be the market leader? Because it works, and it's *free* - so it's not one company making up that 70% share, it's a dozen or more. And unlike Apple, most of the other manufacturers have a relatively
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1) Depending on who you ask, either iOS or BlackBerry App World makes the most money (they apparently jockey for #1 and #2 spots in developer revenue).
2) #3 spot is apparently owned by Amazon.
Depending on who you ask, if some of the people you ask are completely making shit up! Apple est. app store revenues for 2011 of $2.9B and RIM $280M. Order of magnitude, not "jockeying for #1 and #2 spots". And if you take all Android stores (probably combining Amazon, Google, and Samsung is plenty) they are well ahead of RIM for #2. The only thing RIM leads at is "revenue per app" which makes sense when they have a tiny fraction of the apps of the other stores, and those they have tend to be higher pri
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If you think Linux is in 3rd place you aren't counting properly.
Re:3rd place? (Score:4, Funny)
Go ask Palm and Symbian how great it is to fight for the last few percent of the mobile market...
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Hah. 3rd place in the mobile OS market is kind of like 3rd place in the Superbowl. They don't even get to show up for the game.
There's lots to back that up; the mobile market is a scale game and without the large number of customers on a platform it just isn't worth investing in new development. However, the mobile market doesn't quite work like a normal consumer market. The buyers in most countries are the big operators - not the end users - and they are willing to put extra subsidies into a third platform just in order to get more competition in future. Look at how desperately AT&T has been keeping Windows Phone on life s
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This is Slashdot. You actually have to know something to post here. So Fuck off.
ACphincter says what? You have already proven the opposite. But if you disagree, at least have a point...
Firefox OS... (Score:2)
... or die trying.
The OS preview may look positive... (Score:2)
I'm too lazy to check but... (Score:2)
...is this the version that wipes out compatibility with their entire app library, requiring developers to start from scratch if they want to support the new platform?
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Probably. On the other hand developers could tweak their 10 year old Symbian apps to work on it.
Blackberry was like android in that it used a smartphone centric java implementation. It would have been nice if they'd made it just a compile away for android apps, but QT development is pretty straight forward. The fact it's a superset of c++ means many people can already code for it easily enough.
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That is the one, and its a good thing.
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Yup. They intended to include legacy support but gave up, not really giving a reason...
Qt not QT (Score:2, Informative)
QT == QuickTime
Qt == GUI library + other stuff
Warning: Andrew Orlowski (Score:5, Informative)
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Nuff said.
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I've never met a slashtard either but I have met a slushtard
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The Register was described as being "a publication with an open pro-Microsoft bias".
Not really, they generally have an anti-everything bias (tag line is "Biting the hand that feeds IT"), and occasionally revel in saying things that go against the generally accepted geek point of view. I read every day, and I don't think they have a pro-anything bias.
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Maybe you just have the same biases they do so don't notice them?
The Register definitely has it's biases, it's a very right wing leaning publication. To position it in UK politics it's politically aligned with the furthest right leaning elements of the Tory party, i.e. pretty close to UKIP.
I used to read it a fair bit but gave up when I posted a response to one of Andrew Orlowski's articles (one of the few times he allowed comments) pointing out some shall we say "factual inaccuracies" in his story includin
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Somehow, it doesn't surprise me even slightly to learn that Andrew Orlowski is a dick...
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I love ripping on RIM but... (Score:5, Interesting)
But here they are potentially using QT (and thus C++) which is my favorite development base. So there might be hope. I want to see how easy it is to use, deploy, and sell. Next I have doubts about the typical baby boomer being able to use this phone. In the demo there are swipes/side swipes/twisty swipes/and swipes with a half twist of lemon; so I fear that the boomer crowd might be a bit lost.
Lastly the keyboard might free up room for the screen but my daughter has the option of almost any phone she wants and she and her friends all have BB phones for their keyboards and BBMs. My other daughter doesn't text as much and only wants iPhones.
So what I hope that comes from this is that there is a push to get QT not only onto the BB but to expand it to the Android NDK as well as iOS. This might not sound like the best idea for RIM but they would then get developers like me primarily developing for iOS using QT but then porting to the others in short order. I look at my Objective-C code and dread porting all those square brackets to Java or C++. But just noodling the GUI and a bit of fiddling to port stuff would be great.
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That boomer crowd you think my get lost with a few odd swipes was the same crowd that coded in machine language and flipped toggle switches to load memory. I don't think a toy interface is going to throw us.
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...and what percentage of the boomer crowd coded in machine language and flipped toggle switches?
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Does Blackberry 10 still take like 10 mins to boot up if you remove the battery. Seriously the boot times on pretty much all the past Blackberries is painful. I have seen some Berries loaded with some apps take 20 mins to load....
No, on the Dev Alpha B it's about 50 seconds. Every dev alpha software update we've received has decreased that time. This aside, realistically you almost never reboot the thing - unlike the old BB which needed a reboot for every 3rd party software upgrade.
Why BlackBerry? (Score:2)
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"in recent years".
This is a new platform built on QNX, borrowing Qt from Symbian and Meego and running Android apps.
3rd place in a two horse race (Score:3)
BB isn't in the top 5 in unit sales anymore, or if it is, it's barely hanging on to 5 place. And HTC is 3rd place with barely 4.2% and it's almost entirely piggybacking on Android.
There are two phone companies now: Samsung + Android, and Apple iOS. And everyone else is or will soon be irrelevant.
Sony, Panasonic, Sanyo, Nokia, Motorola, Blackberry, ZTE (in the US at any rate) are all going to the Le Brea Tarpits.
And if MS doesn't pull the plug on Win 8 Phone in 20 months it will be because Balmer has lost what's left of his mind.
BB10 Demo by RIM CEO (Score:4, Interesting)
BBC has a video interview with the RIM CEO which shows him demo-ing the BB10 UI. The UI is more elegant than visually in-your-face striking like WinPhone 8.
The UI kind of reminds me of the Opera/Chrome, and now Firefox too, Start Page with thumbnail previews of your favorite or most recently used apps.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20087221 [bbc.co.uk]
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"The application grid is a paradigm that was introduced five years ago, and we have completely changed that", he says, as he opens up the application grid.
Then he proceeds to show us the revolutionary multi-tasking interface, which is in a 2x2 grid.
I hope they plan to have some better demos soon.
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Hmm... talking of blind believers... BB10 isn't out yet.
The problems with Apple Maps only became apparent the day the public got their hands on them.