Everything BlackBerry
Rumors of Reseach In Motion's iconic BlackBerry Messenger app wriggling its way over to iPhone may be coming to an end. Anonymous sources have claimed that new CEO Thorsten Heins shut down the idea of licensing BlackBerry Messenger to carriers and manufacturers as soon as he stepped in, and was actually against RIM doing any kind of licensing at all. Apparently the issue was "not up for discussion", according to the source. It's unfortunate that he made that call early on, considering he openly admitted to looking into licensing deals during the last quarterly conference call. Ex co-CEO Jim Balsillie was previously rumored to champion BBM on other platforms, a project which new sources claimed was called SMS 2.0 internally. They had even acquired a small company called LiveProfile to work on it.
IDC released their quarterly report on worldwide smartphone market share by operating system today, and the chart looks more or less as you'd expect: Android has kept ballooning (59% market share), while iOS maintained a respectable second place (23%), while Symbian (6.8%) and BlackBerry (6.4%) continued their downward spirals.
And there came a day, a day unlike any other, when Earth's mightiest mobile sites found themselves united against a common threat. On that day, the Mobile Nations was born -- to provide the coverage no generic tech blog could provide! Through the years, their roster has prospered, changing several times, but their glory has never been denied! Heed the call, then—for now, the Mobile Nations ASSEMBLE!
At BlackBerry World 2012, RIM has finally given us a sneak preview of their next generation BlackBerry 10 operating system. It won't be released until later in 2012, likely pitting it head-to-head against iOS 6 and iPhone 5,1, and a lot can change, but here's some of what we've seen so far:
RIM Australia has confirmed that it was responsible for the flashmob attack on a Sydney Apple Store.
Some additional investigation into the "Wake Up" flashmob that happened at Australia Apple stores last week reveal it may actually be BlackBerry and Research In Motion behind the stunt.
Kevin, Phil, Derek, Simon, Jay, and Rene talk BlackBerry 10, HTC One, Nokia Lumia 900, the new iPad, something something webOS, and Google Drive. This is Mobile Nations!
Oracle, the 2 ton mutant gorilla of enterprise data software, once considered buying BlackBerry or Palm in order to take on Apple's iPhone and Google's Android in the smartphone space. No. Seriously. Unfortunately, Oracle CEO -- and former Apple board member and long-time Steve Jobs friend -- Larry Ellison decided against it. I say unfortunately because, while I can't imagine Oracle achieving anything inspired with either BlackBerry or Palm, it would have been incredibly interesting to watch them try. Gary Busey on Celebrity Apprentice interesting.
Rumor has it that RIM's recently-resigned co-CEO and board member, Jim Balsillie, sought a drastic plan to open up their infrastructure to wireless service providers, and allow competing platforms, like iOS, to run data through it. That would enable many signature BlackBerry services, namely BBM, to run on iPhone.
BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion today launched their first iPhone app. It's nothing particularly flashy, as you might expect, but Mobile Fusion marks their foray into cross-platform enterprise device management.
