The BlackBerry Torch is a perfect example of that strategy. Better web usage, touch screen but also the keyboard that made Blackberry a huge success. So best of both worlds. It also looks similar to the Bold and Curve. It has also conserved trackpad button that all new Bold’s and Curve’s have.

For technical stuff here is the specs : The Blackberry Torch 9800 will be the first RIM device to run the Blackberry 6 operating system, so expect faster Web browsing and downloads. It will also feature virtual and slide-out keyboards,  a 1GHz processor, 5-megapixel camera and 512MB of RAM.

There have been a lot of previous rumours that the RIM Tablet PC will be called the BlackPad. All of these rumours are because RIM registered the domain name Blackpad.com very recently.

Anyways, sourcing are now saying that this iPad competitor from RIM will be launching in November. Of course every tablet PC will be directly compared to the iPad, but with Microsoft about to launch into the same market, it all seems to be getting a little crowded.

There are few details on the BlackPad apart from the size of the screen 9.7-inch screen (identical to the iPad) and that it can be tethered to a BlackBerry phone so that it can access the Internet. Pricing is similar to the iPad.

]]> http://www.mobilopen.org/2010/08/02/blackpad-for-november/feed/ 0 http://www.mobilopen.org/2010/07/19/all-microsoft-kins-being-recalled-end-of-story/ http://www.mobilopen.org/2010/07/19/all-microsoft-kins-being-recalled-end-of-story/#comments Mon, 19 Jul 2010 07:09:52 +0000 Shaun Zelber http://www.mobilopen.org/?p=934 We already know that Verizon and Microsoft have pulled the plug on the whole KIN series, the question then becomes what to do about existing supplies?

Word has come that anything and everything KIN gets sent back to…ummm wherever…starting tomorrow. What happens to them is anyone’s guess.

That’s right folks, we may be on the verge of a fabled E.T. game situation for the KIN-they will perhaps be dumped in a big landfill, where 20 years from now, rare NIB KINS will fetch for thousands of dollars on eBay.

The geek inside of us wants to run out and buy one to keep next to our big-head Han Solo action figure; the analyst in us sees Microsoft trying to erase this mistake from history and think that’s OK.

Rather than a cheap Chinese look-alike we finally have a serious competitor to the iPhone. For a normal consumer who is used to Samsung already and thanks to Samsung’s much larger distribution network it looks like some interesting things will happen.

The two look almost identical. But the Galaxy has a bigger screen. Even with the iPhone 4 Retina Display, the Galaxy has a Super Amoled screen, so both seem far sharper and brighter and better than most other screens in the store – but the Galaxy is significantly bigger. Suddenly the Samsung is a very compelling player.

Samsung also has several cheaper phones that it can then sell to those customers who don’t want to pay the price of a top line smartphone.

While we are on Samsung, the first Bada phone, the Wave has passed 1 million unit sales. Thats pretty solid for approximately one quarter worldwide. Its nowhere near Apple’s iPhone 4 selling 1.7 million units in a couple of days, but remember, thats not the right comparison. The comparison is to the original launch, first phone on a new operating system. So the right comparison is to the original iPhone 2G launch of 2007. And 1 million Waves compare rather well in that context – far better than for example Google’s highly visible ’superphone’ launch of the Nexus One. Thus Bada is already selling better for Samsung than its Symbian and MS Windows Mobile based phones, and looks to be well on target to be about a third of all Samsung smartphones sold in 2010, behind only Android devices.

A slate of new devices and software is under preparation byResearch in Motion as it looks to keep its Blackberry smartphone from losing more ground to touch-screen devices like Apple Inc.’s iPhone and iPad.  A touch-screen smartphone with a slide-out keyboard is worked upon by RIM.

The phone will operate on a new version of the BlackBerry operating system, working much like an iPhone, letting users swipe through screens and expand images with their fingers besides having a universal search bar that lets users scour the entire phone’s data and some data online as well. Experiments are also carried on by RIM on a tablet device to serve as a larger-screen companion to its BlackBerry phone and it will be capable of connecting to cellular networks via a BlackBerry phone.

There are speculations that RIM will ship a phone running a new operating system and a new Web browser in the quarter ending September 30, but haven’t provided details of the device. Waterloo, Ontario, company, which has long led the U.S. market for smart-phones, has come up with new offerings after facing increased competition from devices built by Apple and those that run on the Android operating system from Google Inc.

RIM still sells more smartphones globally than any company besides Nokia Corp, but its share of the key North American market is slipping, as RIM has been slow to match Apple and Android’s touch-screen technology, smooth Internet-browsing capability and add-on software. RIM’s share of the North American smartphone market by shipments dropped to 38% in the March quarter from 54% in the year-ago quarter.

All of the complaints critics have leveled at the company’s devices will be addressed by RIM in its upcoming smartphone and operating system named BlackBerry OS 6.0. The new device will have a Qwerty keyboard that slides out from the bottom of the touch screen and the search may also be able to locate occurrences of the keyword on sites like Facebook or Twitter.

Samsung have created a complete eco system for their smartphone technology. This includes:
development environment in C++ for their phones
webkit browser allowing browser control in an app or external to app
appstore called samsung apps
ovi style services such as maps and storage (using Amazon S3)
side loader PC based store similar to desktop iTunes called Kies

Overall this has been a massive undertaking for them and it’s appeared in very impressive timescale. The phone itself is exceptional build quality and the screen colours are the best I’ve seen using Super Amoled tech. They seem to have based the system on an in house OS which has been heavily customised.

Incidently Samsung are also hedging their bets because they continue to develop with Microsoft Phone7 and Android. There is a rumour their upcoming tablet will be based on Android.

First impressions is that it’s a complete copy of Apple’s Eco system and a very valiant one. This includes the fact that I think its apps will only be installable from its own appstore after completing its own QA (this is an assumption not yet confirmed, since there may be deals with operators in this area too).

The conference went very deep into the programming approaches and personally I was put off by the level of complexity. C++ now seems very antiquated to me now after having used better languages for years and it seems they make the developer jump through hoops in order to optimise the performance. Considering there’s a 1GHz processor in the phone this is not necessary and making life hard for developers is not constructive. There are no UI building tools and programming a UI seems highly complex. However, if and when I do do some Bada apps I would probably rely heavily on use of the web control and create most of the UI in HTML/CSS; a technique used heavily on the iPhone.

Overall, very impressed. They claim to be selling 40M Bada devices by the end of the year (seems hard to believe that figure!!!) It’s a big play for Samsung and they are investing heavily in the developer eco system (eg most attendees got given phones yesterday).

By Robin Jewsbury

@Robinjewsbury of Alibro

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It is quite obvious what motivates them.. they want to replicate Apple’s success and to a lesser extent to Android’s extent. Samsung wants an app store that allows them a piece of the pie!

Being one of the largest handset manufacturers in the world (about 20% of world wide handset sales) of course does give them a certain pull. But this didn’t do it for Nokia which remains the largest by far but still struggles with imposing Symbian as a viable platform and it’s other ventures such as Maemo/MeeGo flounder. Nokia’s OVI remains an app store player but not a run-away success.

Samsung has recently launched their first Bada phones in Europe and claim plenty of big name content providers who have developped in Bada : Electronic Arts, Gameloft, The Associated Press, CNN, WeatherBug, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Universal Film, Layar, Expedia Affiliate Network, ZAGAT, and many others.Including well-known applications such as Need for Speed Shift (EA), Weather Bug(WeatherBug), Zagat to go(Handmark), and Travel Booker(Expedia) are cited as Bada developers.

But can Samsung really replicate what Apple has done with a closed circuit ? Well a tidbit in their press release seems that they hint at not keeping it closes :
This content will facilitate the development of applications for not just the Samsung Wave, but all other mobile phones that adopt Bada as their platform of choice.

So Samsung plans to licence out the Bada OS ? Seems like it.

But they plan on then selling all applications developed via their store as evidenced by this statement :
Applications developed with the bada SDK can be sold through ‘Samsung Apps’, Samsung’s application store.

Now that seems strange… would LG developers to sell apps for their Bada phones via Samsung’s application store ? I think NOT! So what are we talking about here ? A multitude of app stores for each handset manufacturer ?

I really don’t have the answers but I thought that this article was very interesting article which gives a projected market like this :

So in that hypothetical model the market shares among the Top 10 would be in a couple of years something like

Symbian (Nokia) 35%
Android (LG, ZTE, SonyEricsson, Motorola, Huawei) 23%
Bada (Samsung) 21%
Blackberry (RIM) 4%
iPhone OS/X (Apple) 3%
all other smartphone makers which would include 15 more brands for Android, plus HP/Palm, Microsoft, plus some Japanese etc on Symbian, Linux Mobile etc would share the remaining 14%

Whatever the case it is quite exciting to see what will happen over the rest of year. Lets watch and see..

According to Patrick Remy, Orange’s vice president of devices, at the beginning of 2010, 15% of Orange portfolio was smartphones and this will rise to 30% by the end of the year, and will be 50% by 2013 while with the plethora of white label devices in the pipeline, Orange’s low-cost smartphone portfolio will also include handsets designed by “A-brand” phone makers. The company LG is on the first A-brand product in its affordable smartphone range.

No specific information about the launch timetable and likely cost of the device has been revealed yet. The handset includes the entire standard features like a touchscreen interface, WiFi, GPS, full Web-browsing, and a five megapixel camera and the Android-powered smartphone will launching soon in Spain, Austria, Slovakia and Romania.

The company has explained its objective as- to make low-cost smartphones available for free even on low-cost tariffs and it is in discussions that could see it offer cheap smartphones to prepay customers, with devices that are priced around €120. Orange’s aim of doubling revenues from mobile multimedia services between now and 2012 will get a push from these cheap smartphones.

The operator is putting extra focus on highlighting services like mobile social networking, instant messaging, location-based services and content, taking lesson from the fact that at the beginning of 2009 only one in 10 Orange customers was using mobile multimedia services.

Remy also opined that 25% of Orange’s customers are now using mobile multimedia, which is significant and tremendous growth, but it still means 75% of its customer base are not multimedia users and Orange’s affordable smartphone range will further lower the barrier to mobile multimedia uptake.

I will not make an exhaustive market analysis here, but will share some thoughts. The mobile device market is changing rapidly during the last few years. One reason is the entrance of the new major players – iPhone and Andorid. They forced the old players like Nokia, Sony Erricson , RIM, Microsoft and everybody else to hurry up and catch the train. Apple gave us the new fresh air, which the mobile business needed for years. The old dinosaurs chasing low-risk profits forgot about the main engine of the current technological business – the innovation!
Apple was the one to make them remember that innovation (both technological and business) is not a dirty word and actually may increase profits. Yes the innovation and risk go hand in hand, but that’s way : ideas, passion, commitment and risk.

The following chart provides information about the preferences of the users to some of the current mobile platforms:

The chart is to gave the overall tendency. And the tendency is we do not have a major player and it is still important to target multiple mobile platforms with a single code base. I must say that the figures here are showing the end-user preferences. The preferences of the business user are quite different, because besides the fancy UI and the improved user experience there are may other factor considered by the businesses like robustness, security, development experience, management, integration to existing infrastructure and others.

The ability to target multiple mobile platforms is dependent on the organization skillset and the corresponding platforms development tools. The following table contains a brief comparison between some of the major players in terms of development tools and technologies:

By RUSLAN TRIFONOV’S