World Wide Webb : Android

Why the BlackBerry 10 launch mattered as much as the features

Dave Webb — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 17:07:00 GMT

I’ve long said the Research in Motion – wait, sorry, that’s BlackBerry now – had to knock it out of the park with its new operating system. Users have drifted away to sexier smart phone offerings, and the company that was then known as RIM was trying the patience of the faithful with delay upon delay. Well, if it performs as advertised, BlackBerry genuinely has reinvented the mobile computing experience, and the OS makes Apple and Android devices look cheesy. (Yes, I’m ready for the hate-mail from the fanbois.)

RELATED: What's at stake for RIM

I won’t bother documenting the features. I just spent the better part of two hours frantically tweeting them. You can get your fill of that from @cwceditor, on the hashtag #BB10 or BlackBerry10, or, for that matter, on any news-gathering organization’s Web site. There is something significant about the launch aside from the features.

There was something very Apple-esque about the New York launch of BlackBerry 10. It was flashy, multimedia, worldwide, and even had a stab at the Jobsian late reveal with the announcement of Alicia Keys as the company’s new global creative director. CEO Thorsten Heins's tieless suit look is no match for the late Steve Jobs’s jeans and turtleneck, and he and the execs tapped to launch the OS weren’t as slick as Steve and company, but there was an enthusiasm and approachability that’s been lacking lately. Whatever the polar opposite of aloof is, that’s the image that BlackBerry’s trying to project.

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And that’s what’s significant: They’re trying to project an image. Rather than rest on the laurels of its enterprise server and wildly popular messaging platform, BlackBerry has shown it’s willing to put in the marketing spadework. They want you back, they want app developers, and they’re willing to put in the effort. It’s an ironic role reversal. Apple now looks like the complacent company, with nary a true innovation since the iPad. And the products just aren’t sexy anymore. So … the ball’s in play, as of Feb. 5 in Canada. Will we see iPhone-like lineups for product releases? Not likely. The BlackBerry faithful aren’t that slavishly devoted. Like the company, they project a different image than Apple does.

RIM's salvation: Run the BlackBerry on Android

Dave Webb — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 14:14:00 GMT

Research in Motion Ltd., the beleaguered Waterloo, Ont.-based BlackBerry manufacturer, is at a crossroads.

Wow, does that sound hackneyed. Fact of the matter is, RIM's been dallying at this crossroads for close to two years now, not fully committing to the consumer path nor the enterprise road less travelled. (Mr. Frost, my humblest apologies.)

I've told this story a thousand times now: At a conference some eight or 10 years ago, a RIM representative told me I would never see a camera in a BlackBerry. "You know why?" he said. "Because it's not a consumer device."

Not long after, RIM got distracted by the shiny object of the consumer market. The problem was, the BlackBerry OS didn't have a shiny, happy, consumer friendly interface. This problem was compounded by the fact that RIM hadn't developed a product and services ecosystem around the device à la Apple's iTunes and App Store. When RIM eventually came late to that game, the company couldn't attract developers to populate its app store.

Through it all, ex-co-CEO Jim Balsillie focused on marketing the BlackBerry as a consumer device, largely ignoring the company's roots and strength: managing mobility for enterprises.

New CEO Thorsten HInes says RIM was late to the BYOD game, and will have to aggressively pursue partnershipa to get back in the game. Building something around the late and yet-to-be-released BlackBerry 10 OS is not just a long shot, it's a non-starter. On the consumer side, there's only one option for RIM: Google's Android operating system.

Android has a product, service and content ecosystem that rivals Apple Inc.'s iOS. RIM, with a useful OS several months out on the horizon, will never catch up. On the consumer side, RIM could rebound by focussing on building the best freakin' Android phones we've ever seen. The BlackBerry brand still has some cachet, especially in Canada. Use that. Don't bother with a doomed effort to build a rival OS.

This would allow RIM to focus on a market it can really own: enterprise management of consumer devices. That's where RIM has potential for a BYOD play. It'sFusion management architecture is a great step in that direction, but it's received virtually no marketing effort since its launch.

The BlackBerry operating system is the albatross around RIM's neck. It has to be ditched so the company can focus on battles it can win.

Where your digital life is

Dave Webb — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 18:50:00 GMT

I’d been impressed with Microsoft Corp.’sWindows Phone 7 at its launch, but have only recently had a chance to play with a phone running the operating system at length. The phone is anHTC Radar running on Wind Mobile, and the combination of smart phone and operating system is a good one.

The phone has a 400 by 800 pixel, 3.8-inchGorilla Glass screen, built-in 5-megapixel camera, stereo FM radio, 8GB of memory (not expandable, unfortunately), and 512MB of RAM. In other words, it’s a smart phone. What distinguishes one from another is becoming less and less about the hardware. The dreaded word “commodity” springs to mind.

At risk of sounding an awful lot like a marketing type, the differentiator in the smart phone market is the experience, and that comes down, for the most part, to the operating system and how it’s packaged with apps and online services.

(Apropos not much, I was called out by a stranger at my local for constantly referring to the BlackBerry’s OS, even though much of the time I was referring to the user interface. Another story.)

Microsoft’s mobile ecosystem (sorry, more marketing talk) is interesting to compare with those of other mobile players. It’s built around Windows Live (or Hotmail, to those of us who’ve had accounts for ages). SkyDrive hosts files, including audio and video, online, for accessibility anywhere. Xbox Live connects to the gaming experience. The integration of Microsoft Office applications is the best on the market, and documents are accessible through SkyDrive.

What separates the Windows Phone experience from the Google experience is the fact that in its coming Windows 8 operation system, Microsoft is going to extend the user interface theme (the so-called Metro interface) to the desktop. Google doesn’t have a desktop (don’t seepeople running Android on anything other than a phone or a tablet). Apple doesn’t have the e-mail integration. So it’s a pretty solid play by Microsoft.

But (you knew there was a “but,” didn’t you?) there is something that stands in the way of the Windows mobile play. Our IT manager, Mat Panchalingam, put it aptly in an as-yet unaired video interview. After using the beta of Metro-style Windows 8 for a few days, he had remarkably good impressions. However, “My life is in Google,” he said.

The entrenchment of Google is probably the single biggest barrier to Microsoft’s mobile success. People like Mat, whose e-mail, applications and search are bound up in Google, aren’t likely to shift their lives over to the Windows Live ecosystem. This is more of a barrier even than the Apple cool factor (or Research in Motion Ltd.’s enterprise security angle; Microsoft can tell a pretty good story there, too).

After years of truly horrid mobile devices, Microsoft finally seems to have got it. Did this mobile play come too late? Microsoft has missed boats before. But the company has shown in the past the ability to catch the market PDQ once the sights are aligned on the right target. Google and Apple may have huge head starts, but it rarely pays to count Microsoft out.

RIP webOS

Dave Webb — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 19:52:00 GMT

I'm reading in stunned disbelief that Hewlett-Packard Co. will "discontinue operations for webOS devices, specifically the TouchPad and webOS phones."

I've never been shy about my fondness for webOS, from the first iteration of the Palm Pre, nor about my disappointment in the poor marketing support it received under the Palm badge and the molasses-slow development after the HP takeover two years ago. As an operating system, webOS is far more intuitive than Research in Motion Ltd.'s BlackBery OS, offers far more business integration and functionality than Apple Inc. 's iOS, and compares favourably with Windows Phone 7 as a hybrid personal/business platform.

According to the press release quoted above (which also describes a plan to sell or spin off HP's Personal Systems Group), HP says it "will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS going forward." I can only read that as, "we're going to sell it if we can, but we doubt it."

Combined with Google Inc.'s recent Motorola Mobile purchase, there's been a significant impact on the mobile landscape in recent days. A first-glance analysis:

* One more alternative to Apple's One True Tablet® is eliminated. But it's not that those likely to be buying webOS devices would be evaluating head-to-head against the iPad.

* Google has solidified Android's position regarding patent challenges. Motorola's hardware business will likely be spun off or killed, as much to appease Google's Android partners, who are probably quietly seething over the purchase, as to reflect Google lack of interest in the hardware market. The webOS news is likely better for Android than for iOS, though webOS was more of a potential threat than a clear and present danger, given the small but growing market footprint.

* RIM probably is the company treating the webOS news with the most glee, given that webOS devices were aimed squarelyat RIM's enterprise wheelhouse, and it also leaves one less platform to for a critical mass of developers. I don't believe the Google-Motorola tie-up is a huge threat to RIM; at least, it's no more of a threat than Android was before.

* I'd call Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Phone 7 OS the clear winner here, fighting for share in the enterprise/personal hybrid market, but there have been noises that Microsoft's going to go the Windows 8 route with future tablets, a move I can't get behind for two reasons: A) The last aborted wave of tablets five years ago demonstrated that desktop OSs won't fly on a tablet form factor, because they're aethetically phones, not laptops, and 2) Microsoft finally got mobile right with Phone 7, and it's a shame to lose the operating system that, now anyway, best combines intuitiveness with business utility.

On a related note, Beta is still dead. Mind you, so's VHS now, but wrapping my head around what that lesson means is something for another day.

What does Googorola mean to the mobile market?

Dave Webb — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 18:31:00 GMT

You're probably aware by now, but just in case you aren't: Google Inc. coughed up $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility this morning. On the surface, this looks bad for Waterloo-based BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion (competing Android now has a hardware component, just like the BB) and good for Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Phone 7 (peeved mobile manufacturers might take a longer look at the platform rather than going Android).

Not sure I buy either argument. All the buzz about this announcement has been about the patent portfolio Google picks up, 24.500-or-so strong. With Microsoft also reportedly at the table, Google had to jump on the opportunity at, reportedly, $40 a share, a 60 per cent premium. Microsoft was after the same thing as Google, says GigaOm blogger Om Malik, figuring that patent store offered ample opportunity to "torpedo" Android.

I don't believe Google wants to be in the hardware business. I doesn't make sense to compete with your own suppliers, or develop, as some have suggested, a two-tier Android platform, one for Googorola, another for everyone else. So I don't see a new threat to RIM.

Nor do I see an advantage for Phone 7.As an anonymous RIM senior manager wrote in an open letter to execs, it isn't about winning over the providers with hardware anymore, it's about winning developers over to your platform. Even if the noses of the likes of HTC and Samsung are out of joint, the critical mass of Android apps and developers will be too juicy to abandon. Until Phone 7's got that same critical mass, Android handset-makers aren't going anywhere.

Windows 8 on a tablet? Why?

Dave Webb — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 16:40:00 GMT

Reports from our sister publication PC Advisor (UK) suggest that Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer will open the annual Consumer Electronics show with a "slew" of new tablets running on a new operating system, Windows 8.

It just seems a bad idea -- IMHO -- in so many ways to try to put a desktop OS on a tablet. Notice I didn't say. "tablet PC." That ship has sailed; the tablet isn't a PC anymore.

The first generation of tablets, four or five years ago, were PCs, hence the prevalence of heavy, awkward convertibles with hinged keyboards that did neither slate not laptop well. (I still meet people who swear by their old convertibles, but they're few and far between.)

Fast forward to CES 2010, with Ballmer declaring The Year of the Tablet. But few of the previewed tablets saw the light of day. One that did, though, was Apple Inc.'s iPad, running essentially an adapted smart phone operating system. Within a few months, more tablets were hitting the market. But they were based on Google Inc.'s Adroid operating system, another mobile phone OS.

In fact, Android-based tablets might soon be the norm, with a thriving off-the-radar white-box market of tabs from as many as 50 manufacturers, according to ABI Research.

But my real objection is that, finally, Microsoft has a credible mobile operating system in Windows Phone 7 that would rock a tablet. It's a remarkably intuitive experience -- important in the tablet market, where Steve Jobs dared to bandy the word "magical" -- combined with what's been described as the best mobile integration of Microsoft's Office products ever. (Well, of course ...)

Somebody hasn't read Ray Ozzie's memo about the perils of the post-PC world.