According to the GSMA’s exhibitor list, neither company will have a stand at the show this year, although neither could tell me exactly why this is the case. I had a strange conversation with a Microsoft spokeswoman the other day about this, who said that they are not allowed to say anything about Microsoft’s plans for MWC. “So you can neither confirm nor deny that Microsoft will be there?” I asked. “We can’t say anything,” was the response.

Interestingly, Microsoft didn’t even have a booth or an official press event at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this year despite CEO Steve Ballmer appearing on stage for Qualcomm’s (rather surreal) keynote. Perhaps the Redmond firm is now trying to emulate Apple, which does not appear at trade shows at all.

BlackBerry, despite the opportunity to showcase its brand new BlackBerry 10 platform, has also decided against exhibiting at the show, although executives will be present and the company has booked meeting rooms off-site in Barcelona. When I spoke to the firm, all hands were on deck ahead of the company’s biggest launch for years, so providing a reason for the firm’s lack of participation was something I was told I’d hear back about. But in BlackBerry’s case, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to guess why the firm won’t be there.

A stand at MWC doesn’t come cheap and budgets are tight for everyone these days, particularly in Western Europe and North America, due to the macro-economic climate. One suspects that if your company has seen its market share shrink to a fraction of what it was, as BlackBerry has, and recorded consecutive quarterly losses in your financial reports, all while investing millions of dollars in a new product, the CFO will look to cut any additional spend that he deems as extravagant.

Furthermore, BlackBerry can’t exactly exhibit as part of the Canadian pavilion – not when competing handset vendors often have entire halls to themselves. It’s pretty much a case of all or nothing for the firm, and it looks like it has chosen the latter.

Microsoft and RIM deciding against exhibiting at the show could be two isolated coincidences, however, despite having stands at MWC this year, HTC and Samsung have both confirmed that they will not be holding any press conferences at the show either.

In the late nineties and early 2000s, handset vendors made their big product announcements at the CeBIT show in Hanover, Germany. However, as the mobile industry gathered momentum, and in a bid to get a jump on the white noise of CeBIT, they began to gravitate more towards the operators’ show, unveiling their new products at what was then the GSM World Congress.

Now though, it seems that CES in Las Vegas provides a more suitable arena for firms that are looking to leverage cross-platform strengths—firms for whom mobile is just one part of the play. Crucially, of course, CES is a consumer event and it is the direct relationship with the consumer, free of operator mediation, that handset vendors are after.

The most high-profile launch at MWC 2012 was the GSMA’s rich communications suite offering, Joyn. So maybe vendors scaling down their activities at the show may not be a bad thing. After all, handset launches have a habit of stealing headlines and overshadowing less glamorous—but equally important—news about networks and operators.

So now it is incumbent on the network side of the business to ensure that there is plenty to talk about—and worthy of the mainstream media coverage that GSMA has long sought for its event—at what remains the most important event in the mobile communications industry. No pressure.

The BlackBerry Z10

The Canadian handset manufacturer formerly known as Research In Motion unveiled its long-awaited BlackBerry 10 operating system on Wednesday. At an event in New York, CEO Thorsten Heins revealed two devices running on the OS and announced a change of name for the company to match its product brand.

Key features of the OS include BlackBerry Hub; a single place to manage all your conversations such as personal or work email, BBM messages, social media updates or notifications. The platform offers the ability to “peek” into the BlackBerry Hub from within any app, meaning users can view notifications by swiping the screen at any time.

The on screen keyboard and text entry also claims to be more advanced in understanding and adapting to the user, by learning and suggesting words while typing. It is also able to translate messages into variety of different languages, as BlackBerry’s research shows that the majority of the firm’s users type messages in two different languages; ten per cent of them type in three.

BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) also includes voice calling and video chat, and has the ability to screen share with other BlackBerry 10 contacts.

Naturally, the platform is particularly rich in enterprise functionality; BlackBerry Balance is a sandbox separates and secures work applications and data from personal content on BlackBerry devices. BlackBerry Safeguard technology helps users protect what is important to them and their business and BlackBerry Remember combines memos, tasks, photos, documents, and other files into a single hub. The BlackBerry World storefront includes 70,000 BlackBerry 10 apps.

“Every feature, every gesture, and every detail in BlackBerry 10 is designed to keep you moving,” Heins said at the launch of the platform.

Heins has previously spoken about BlackBerry’s ambition to make BB10 future-proof for the next ten years, and Stephen Bates, European MD for the firm, told Telecoms.com how this will be achieved.

“We’ve designed this micro-kernel, multi-core processing platform and the products we’ve launched are just the first manifestation of what the system can do. We’ve tried to articulate a vision around this mobile computing era that we see as the next big growth curve.”

“The world we’re trying to paint is a world where your interaction and activity transcends the mobile device and starts extending into your house, in terms of smart devices and components, and your car and in your business life according to the vertical you operate in, such as logistics.”

He added that in this mobile computing world, it will be important that platforms are able to identify who the user is through their various social profiles. The power of the software has been articulated with what the company has demonstrated at industry events in proof-of-concept cars such as Bentley and Porsche, he added.

Bates also admitted that having a platform that can compete with platforms such as iOS and Android is one thing, but being able to demonstrate its functionality to potential customers is the challenge that lies ahead.

“Historically, the way our devices became prevalent was through word-of-mouth, so that’s one channel that is very important to us – we’re looking to engage with the community. We’ll also be using above the line and below the line marketing channels. Ultimately though, we’re looking to show people, rather than tell them, how good this platform is.”

He claimed that BlackBerry does not have any sales forecasts for the first two BB10 devices, but for the moment it is keen to ensure that its 79 million-strong existing customer base remains with BlackBerry and that it can convince consumers who have previously used a BlackBerry to convert back to the platform.

The BlackBerry Z10 has a 4.2-inch display, 2GB RAM, 16GB hard drive and runs on a 1,5GHz dual core Qualcomm processor. It has an 8-megapixel camera and is capable of 1080m HD video recording.

The BlackBerry Q10 has a physical keyboard, a 3.1-inch touchscreen with a 720 x 720 pixel resolution, as well as a 1.5GHz dual-core processor and 2GB of RAM.

Both are LTE enabled and will launch first in the UK, where they are on sale this week.

RIM

How does this article affect your perception of RIM/BlackBerry? What is this?

RIM is 71.2% positive

Total votes: 90

10 77 90 5201a146bf 0

BlackBerry’s new platform has received a warm response from the analyst community

Despite having seen its market share drop considerably over the past two years and having delayed the launch of the platform several times, Canadian handset firm BlackBerry launched its BlackBerry 10 platform this week, still hoping to disrupt a smartphone market dominated by iOS and Android.

Those two platforms account for 92 per cent of the global smartphone market share, according to Strategy Analytics, but BlackBerry’s flagship offering has received a warm response from the analyst community, with many believing that BB 10 offers a serious alternative.

“The BlackBerry 10 platform offers a differentiated user experience in today’s crowded and homogenous smartphone market,” said Adam Leach, principal analyst at Ovum.

“The Blackberry Z10 and Q10 will stand out from the Android masses and look distinct from Apple’s iPhone. The user experience of Blackberry 10 introduces some nice new features but importantly builds on Blackberry’s UI heritage and therefore will certainly appeal to existing Blackberry users.”

However, he added that Ovum believes that despite a platform that will attract short-term interest from existing users, the company will struggle to appeal to a wider audience and in the long-term will remain a niche player in the smartphone market.

But Robert Rutherford, CEO of IT outsourcing services provider QuoStar Solutions believes BlackBerry may have taken a major step in making BYOD commercially viable.

“Traditionally BYOD has had two major drawbacks, it wasn’t secure and it wasn’t practical. The noises coming from the RIM camp today suggest that BlackBerry may be on the cusp of releasing a phone which has tackled these problems head on,” he said.

“The security risks for BYOD devices are more or less the same as company owned devices. It is however much harder to control devices the company doesn’t own. How do you dictate which applications and services can or can’t be installed, either intentionally or unintentionally? According to BlackBerry, the answer is, on the surface at least, remarkably simple: separate them. Instead of having a work phone and a personal phone, get a work/personal phone – the company might even buy it for you.

“Until the device is out in the market though, we won’t know for sure if it has the kind of potential that the pre-release rumours suggest, but if it lives up to the hype then there will be just one question from BYOD fans: when is the tablet coming?”

“I am excited about BB10,” added Jason Yeomans, MD at telecoms and IT managed services PMGC Technology Group. “Not because it is a BlackBerry, but because it is a great device that will add even more choice to an already competitive market place.”

Yeomans added that technology can drive growth back into the economy through mobile working, creating scalable and secure environments that can deliver services faster. He believes that BB10 does that but it also, for the first time, marries that with a social, user friendly interface.

“Some of the new developments are genuinely innovative – BlackBerry Balance for example or the UI on the touch screen keyboard. These are advancements that users will really love.”

Malik Saadi, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media said that the new BlackBerry Z10 device delivers some of the most efficient, accurate and engaging ways to access messaging and social networking services to date.

“These services are always just one gesture away from the user regardless of the other tasks the phone is performing. The BlackBerry Z10’s comprehensive and yet intuitive typing experience, the architecture of the messaging hub, the speed of execution and multitasking capabilities make it stand out from the best smartphones currently available on the market,” he said. “Its LTE performance has also been first rate, at least in North America.”

He added that Blackberry Z10 needs to seduce business users and advanced consumers, as this audience is often more concerned about whether the device enables high productivity and gives scope for creativity and less concerned about price.

“However, in the consumer segment, the challenge BlackBerry faces is not so much related to the device’s performance or its appeal but is more about how consumers will react to its brand new approach to the user experience,” Saadi added. “Given that consumers are generally slow to adapt to new user experiences, they might find it hard to connect with Z10’s user interface from the first touch. The minimalistic design of the phone means it does not feature the traditional physical ‘buttons’ users are accustomed to – the home button, the back button and the search button. Instead the phone relies predominantly on soft touch and gesture for navigation.”

He added that it will be challenging for BlackBerry to push the new device to consumers in retail stores, as sales representatives often prefer to sell as many phones as quickly as possible, preferably the ones that don’t require too much effort in educating the consumer.

RIM

How does this article affect your perception of RIM/BlackBerry? What is this?

RIM is 71.2% positive

Total votes: 90

10 77 90 5201a146bf 0

Canadian BlackBerry maker RIM has a lot to prove wtih the launch of its Blackberry 10 (BB10) operating system later today. The handset vendor’s struggles have been much publicised—after posting disappointing financial results throughout last year it watched its share of the global smartphone market drop to just 4.1 per cent in 2012, according to data from Informa’s Intelligence Centre. In 2010 it had been more than 17 per cent.

Here Telecoms.com investigates what the company will be bringing to the table as it attempts to reverse its decline.

Since his appointment as CEO of the firm in January 2012, Thorsten Heins has spoken often about the impact that BB10 will have on RIM’s performance. He has said that the platform will be future proof for the next ten years—and there will need to be evidence of this at the unveiling if it is to generate any sort of enthusiasm from industry observers.

As Colin Cieszynski, market analyst at financial derivatives dealer CMC Markets Canada puts it: “Having become a fallen star in the eyes of the street, RIM needs a big hit to turn this tale from one of woe to one of redemption.”

The landscape has changed drastically since RIM established dominance in the enterprise device market. Today smartphones are consumer rather than enterprise purchases, and those consumers are overwhelmingly opting for Android and iOS handsets—more than 92 per cent of smarpthone sales in 4Q12 were accounted for by these two operating systems, according to Strategy Analytics.

Jan Dawson, chief telecoms analyst  at Ovum, says this could represent a pitfall for RIM as it is still very much focused on the needs of the enterprise.

“The points of differentiation RIM has focused on in teasers for the new platform confirm this – better multitasking, productivity, email, contacts and calendar applications and so on, rather than a better gaming, content consumption or social networking experience,” he says.

It is Ovum’s view, he says, that RIM’s intention for BlackBerry 10 is that it be “the best BlackBerry for BlackBerry users” rather than something that will necessarily win converts from other platforms.

Not everyone agrees though. Malik Saadi, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media, has had a look at prototypes of the BlackBerry Z10, which will launched today and targeted squarely at the high end smartphone market, and is impressed by what he sees. “Certainly, RIM should not be shy in comparing this device to Apple’s iPhone or Samsung’s S3,” he says.

He adds that the previous OS, BlackBerry 7, lacked music and video hubs, which effectively disqualified it as a contender in the consumer smartphone market, but such hubs have now been integrated into BB10.

Nonetheless, Saadi is not expecting fireworks any time soon. He cautioned that even the iPhone sold in modest quantities when it was first launched in 2007, as did the HTC Dream (or T-Mobile G1) – the first ever Android handset.

“This is a completely new platform, with a unique user experience, which requires customers to accept and adapt to it,” he says. “For RIM to sell between one or two million units of the Z10 in the first quarter of its launch would be acceptable; three to four million would be very good; anything higher would be exceptional. But anything less than one million would be deemed as totally unacceptable by shareholders.”

Ovum’s Dawson notes that at its peak, RIM shipped between 12 and 15 million BlackBerry devices per quarter, but believes there is no way it can hit this number on a sustainable basis once the BB10 launch filters through.

“Though the new platform should have significant appeal to existing users, we don’t expect it to win significant numbers of converts from other platforms,” he says. “There is little in the new platform that suggests it will have the compelling apps, content stores, or the broader ecosystem that consumers have come to expect in a competitive smartphone platform.”

Reinstating itself as a serious contender in the premium smartphone market is not the only challenge facing RIM. The company’s form in emerging markets has been comparatively strong and, with so much time and effort invested into the BB10 platform, RIM will need to be careful that it does not jeopardise the stronghold that it has in markets such as Southeast Asia and Central Africa.

“In emerging markets, BlackBerry devices have become a middle-class status symbol as they once were in mature markets,” says Dawson. “But these devices are low-priced and based on BB10’s predecessor BB7, which is destined for the scrap heap in the medium term. As developers shift their focus to BB10, it will be harder and harder for RIM to maintain the appeal of the older platform in these markets, especially since it is unlikely to release new hardware running BB7.”

Saadi agrees and warned that unless RIM continues to develop low-end BlackBerry 7 devices for emerging markets, it could lose the little clout it still has.

“BB10 does not address emerging markets, and it is likely to be 2014 before RIM can scale down the platform enough to launch low end devices running on it. The company needs to address this issue quickly, otherwise it could lose out to the likes of Nokia, ZTE and Huawei.”

Hello Bentley

Troubled Canadian vendor Research In Motion (RIM) is maintaining its relevance in the industry through QNX, the software subsidiary it bought in 2010, by focusing on connected cars.

At CES this week, the QNX operating system popped up in a concept car based on a Bentley Continental GT convertible with participation from Texas Instruments, AT&T Watson, Shazam, and Elektrobit.

Version 2.0 of the QNX Car development platform, which launched at the show, supports a rich set of pre-integrated technologies, both from QNX and dozens of ecosystem partners and claims to significantly reduce the time required to build connected infotainment systems. One customer apparently slashed their development effort down to 14 months from three years.

One of the new features of QNX car 2.0 demonstrated in the Bentley is speech recognition technology, called ‘Watson’. Just say “Hello Bentley,” and the car’s voice recognition system starts interacting in a distinctly British accent.

The framework extracts meaning from the driver’s spoken words, enabling in-car systems to create calendar appointments, dictate email or text messages, set navigation destinations, and perform general internet searches.

The company is also working on an HTML5 SDK for the application, which will be out by mid 2013, giving mobile developers specialised APIs for accessing automotive devices and hardware.

Check out our full feature on connected cars

“The era of multi-year design cycles in car infotainment is over; our customers now want to develop at the speed of mobility. Case in point: we helped one customer slash their development effort down to 14 months — a massive improvement over the industry standard of three years,” said Andy Gryc, automotive product marketing manager, QNX Software Systems. “At the same time, our platform helps infotainment systems stay relevant long after they’ve been deployed, through an HTML5 framework that simplifies smartphone integration and that enables manufacturers to keep vehicles fresh with new apps and content.”

Delphi Automotive, which develops in car infotainment systems, recently selected QNX as its next generation software platform.

According to RIM’s own stats, the QNX platform is used in 60 per cent of cars currently on the road, and according to Jamie Moss, senior analyst at Informa Telecoms and Media, the firm already has the expertise required to develop a strong offering for the connected car market.

“Many people look at operating systems such as iOS think of it as being far too closed so it will never move beyond Apple’s own products and with Android the concern is that it’s far too open, and it’s a bit too “fuzzy” to use in specific deployments – it is best as a general purpose operating system for phones or tablets,” he explains.

“But RIM has the experience that is required to develop something for such a specific type of industry and such a specific type of product.”

RIM’s role in the automobile space is not a well known one. Operating on a white label basis, the in-car computers are not branded as RIM or Blackberry, but QNX is what the head unit in the majority of cars run on.

“Drivers don’t know they’re driving a RIM device – QNX would have been commissioned by the individual car manufacturers for RIM to produce a version of the operating system that conformed to their particular requirements and allows the particular services that they wish to offer,” explains Moss. “It usually ends up being branded by the actual company vending to the consumer – so, typically the automobile OEM. They’d be oblivious to the fact that it’s QNX, let alone that RIM now owns QNX.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Nokia is attempting to enforce a similar arbitration order to that which was handed down by the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce

Embattled handset manufacturers Nokia and RIM are now locked in a dispute with each other over patents in the US, Canada and UK. The two firms are fighting over intellectual property they have licensed to each other since 2003, which enables phones to connect to wifi networks.

Nokia is attempting to enforce a similar arbitration order to that which was handed down by the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce as part of the same dispute. The Swedish arbitrator ruled that RIM is “not entitled to manufacture or sell products compatible with the WLAN standard” until it agrees on royalties with Nokia.

“RIM is liable to pay royalties and damages to Nokia for its … sales of any subscriber terminals (handsets or tablets) … compatible with the WLAN standard,” the arbitrator said in the ruling. “RIM has not contested that it manufactures and sells products using WLAN in accordance with Nokia’s WLAN patents.”

According to Nokia, a cross-license agreement was reached with RIM for standards-essential cellular patents in 2003 and was amended in 2008.

“In 2011, RIM sought arbitration, arguing that the license extended beyond cellular essentials,” Nokia said in a statement. “In November 2012, the arbitration tribunal ruled against RIM. It found that RIM was in breach of contract.”

“RIM and its US subsidiary nevertheless continue to violate the award and breach the underlying agreement. In order to enforce the Tribunal’s ruling, we have now filed actions in the US, UK and Canada with the aim of ending RIM’s breach of contract.”

If there’s a common ground for RIM and Microsoft, it’s that they both have a lot riding on software offerings that are still in their nascent stages of development

Canadian handset firm and BlackBerry manufacturer Research In Motion (RIM) has seen some poor harvests of late. 2011 was cold and hard, and 2012 hasn’t been any better. At mid-year the company hired JP Morgan and RBC Capital to conduct a “far-reaching strategic review” and to look for partnership options, while also announcing plans to cut a “significant” number of jobs.

But for a firm that has had reigned unchallenged over the enterprise mobility sector for as long as RIM has, the most smarting disappointment has to come from the fact that its crown is no longer secure. The Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend is seeing enterprises shift their focus from procurement and control to device agnostic management strategies although that trend is not yet the Canadian firm’s greatest threat. The biggest pressure is coming from a company that has built up majority market share in the enterprise PC space through software—something at which RIM has yet to prove itself.

Microsoft is a silverback in business software, where it enjoys a near monopoly on desktop and portable PC operating systems. But despite several attempts, and to its enduring frustration, the Redmond company has failed to make any real dent in the mobility space. That has never looked closer to changing than it does now, as its partnership with Nokia starts bearing fruit and other licensees begin to offer devices based on the company’s flagship platform, Windows Phone 8.

Windows 8, a broad reaching platform of which the mobile iteration is only one element, is designed to work across all of a user’s devices—desktop PC, laptop, netbook, tablet, smartphone—and its user interface for all mobile devices is based on the same Metro tiled system introduced with Windows Mobile 7. The idea is to make switching devices and working remotely as seamless and familiar as possible.

Familiarity is a key ingredient here—enterprises are averse to change—but Microsoft has got a second ace up its sleeve, an almost cast iron guarantee that it will be able to create a good development community for Windows 8.

RIM has taken note: “If you look back over the last year, we’ve launched more enterprise software services than in the past two or three years in total,” says Tim Hodkinson, director of EMEA enterprise marketing at RIM.

“Just in the last few months, we’ve launched a new version of Mobile Voice System, which is our fixed mobile convergence product. We’ve launched a new version of BlackBerry Enterprise Server and we’ve got another one coming towards the end of the year; we’ve launched Citrix Receiver client on the Playbook, Sharepoint client and a whole bunch of enterprise IM and unified comms clients. But the biggest new product in this space for us over the last few months has been BlackBerry Mobile Fusion, which was our entry into multi-platform device management.”

It’s an impressive list and one that suggests RIM is taking the fine tuning of its portfolio for the enterprise space very seriously indeed. As Hodkinson points out: “We’re starting to call it ‘enterprise mobility management’, because it’s not just mobile device management anymore. It includes heavy aspects of security management, expense management, and application deployment as well. Over the past few months, our customers have seen a renewed focus on us bringing new enterprise related product and services to market.”

The question now is whether RIM can turn its users on to these products and services fast enough to make a difference. BlackBerry 10 (BB10), the company’s next-generation platform, will not be available before the first quarter of 2013, following a series of delays. And while the analyst community does not doubt BB10’s capabilities—it all looks good on paper—this alone is not enough to reverse the decline.

Informa Telecoms & Media analyst Malik Saadi warns that 100 per cent of the nearly 80 million BlackBerry users out there are still using legacy devices, so upgrading all these users to BB10 will not happen overnight and RIM may well lose a great number of users in the process.

The future flagship OS needs to enable a smooth migration of BlackBerry users to a new environment capable of offering a superior experience without compromising the key factors upon which the BlackBerry brand is founded. But RIM has already hit one nasty speedbump in the journey to realise this vision.

The Canadian firm invested in QNX, a microkernel-based framework that can be easily adapted to the hardware it supports, with the view that it could create an ecosystem around the OS quickly. However, it proved very complex for RIM to integrate key BlackBerry applications into QNX, leading to the commercial failure of the PlayBook, the only device powered by QNX, due to a lack of email and BlackBerry messaging service support.

RIM’s alternative solution and a more suitable platform for the next-generation of BlackBerry smartphones is BB10, which brings what RIM regards as the best of BB7 in terms of the UI and services with the modularity, security, reliability and performance enabled by the QNX architecture. Thanks to these qualities, BB10 will be able to integrate and run BlackBerry flagship services natively and, at the same time, run applications brought in from other popular development environments, including Android and HTML5. With these qualities in mind, RIM aims to create a powerful cross-platform environment to take advantage of the innovation from various developer communities.

Differentiation in the smartphone space will increasingly be on the application/service layers and less on platform or hardware. So those that manage to establish a strong brand and an enticing ecosystem will be the most successful smartphone platforms in the market. This is the only way RIM can differentiate its BlackBerry offering and withstand the competition in the mobile platform space.

But if there’s a common ground for RIM and Microsoft, it’s that they both have a lot riding on software offerings that are still in their nascent stages of development.

The hotly-anticipated Windows Phone 8 (WP8) finally made its debut in early September, when Samsung and Nokia announced their first devices. Analysts at Informa believe the fresh platform is equipped with the right tools to satisfy the market’s appetite for innovation and is a challenge to rivals like Apple iOS. However, WP7 is not truly upgradeable to WP8, which will have an impact on legacy devices already in the market, putting Microsoft in much the same position RIM is with regards to BB10.

Yet analysts believe WP8 could be a game changer, winning strong support from the OEM community, including Nokia, HTC, Samsung, LG and Huawei and ZTE, which said they would not seriously engage with Microsoft until WP 8 was ready.
“Although Microsoft hasn’t told us in any great detail what’s in Windows 8 [the desktop version is due for release in the fourth quarter], the fact that there is a stronger tie up between mobile and desktop and support for tablets all makes a stronger and very good argument for enterprise usage,” says Martin Garner, mobile services specialist at analyst house CCS Insight.

Windows Phone 8 fills gaps left by its predecessor, supporting secure booting and full device encryption, based on BitLocker, as well as integration with existing device management systems for remote wiping and enforced password policies. Enterprises will also be able to create their own ‘hubs,’ giving employees a single point of access for business applications and support tickets and alerts.

Although the security features of BlackBerry are well understood and respected by enterprises, many corporations will also have invested a great deal in securing Windows desktop and server platforms, which will translate over to Windows Phone 8. And since many enterprises that have used RIM’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) have also used Microsoft’s System Centre platform, which features support for iOS and Android, waiting for BES10, which will be the first RIM platform to properly support these other devices seems less attractive.

The crux of it is that Microsoft will benefit greatly from a large installed base of enterprise users and will no doubt reap the extra rewards of a vast marketing budget to be dropped on Windows 8 in the latter part of this year.
“The device ecosystem for Windows Phone is very good and over the next two to three months we will see a rounding out of that portfolio across different manufacturers,” says Garner. “In the case of Samsung, WP8 is not as strategic as Android, but there are enough manufacturers that are struggling on Android that are now licensing WP8 as well, so expect to see a lot more balancing of this portfolio and a serious range of manufacturers offering WP8, making it a much more solid proposition.”

One option that analysts keep proposing and RIM keeps avoiding, is the licensing of BB10 to other device vendors, in order to extend the reach of BlackBerry services beyond its own portfolio of devices. Gross profit from selling BlackBerry devices is in rapid decline, while service revenues have increased consistently, making it increasingly clear that hardware is currently RIM’s weakest link. Licensing its software will enable RIM to target a wider audience and unlock new market opportunities, allowing the company to reinvigorate its position as a leader in delivering a premium customer experience and reliable and secure messaging services.

But RIM’s Hodkinson will not be drawn. “We’re looking at all opportunities. We’re very excited about our new platform and not surprisingly, so are other vendors who got sight of the platform at BB Jam and BB World, but we’ve not made any decisions yet,” he says.

Microsoft has little to lose. The company already has an installed base of enterprise users and has been ineffectually chipping away at mobility for some time now. With a promising new platform and OEM support, the company’s time may finally have come. But for RIM, the clock is ticking. Hardware is weighing the company down and its long time hesitation to go long on software may mean that what is to come is too little, too late.

The Blackberry Bold 9790

Back in June, Telecoms.com asked whether a refreshed software platform was enough to help embattled vendor RIM back on its feet. As the BlackBerry developer tour kicks off in the US, first reports suggest that it may well be.

The company has attracted much criticism in recent times, posting a $518m net loss in its fiscal first quarter ended June 2012, hiring JP Morgan and RBC Capital to conduct a far-reaching strategic review and announcing plans to cut a “significant” number of jobs.

A number of reports of late have forecast that RIM will soon begin to lose subscribers, for the first time in its history. However, the BlackBerry maker has defied expectations so far, revealing that its subscriber base has actually risen from the 78 million it reported earlier this year to 80 million. The news has resulted in the Canadian firm’s shares increasing more than three per cent.

At BlackBerry Jam Americas in San Jose on Wednesday, RIM took another step towards rebuilding its brand,  releasing the latest update to the BlackBerry 10 development tools beta. The beta provides developers with greater capabilities and features for building applications on the long anticipated platform on which its next generation of smartphones will run on.

The updates to the beta software development tools improve the ease and speed of development for BlackBerry 10, which RIM claims is the most open ecosystem on the market today. Developers can choose to develop apps with the languages and frameworks including; Native C/C++, Qt, HTML5, Adobe AIR and Android Java runtime technologies.

“Developers can use the skills and knowledge they already have to quickly and easily build high quality and engaging apps,” RIM said in a statement. “Due to the high demand, we have manufactured a second round of BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha testing devices for distribution. This is a sign of our commitment to our developer community. We are making sure they have the best software tools to build, and with this device, the best hardware to test.”

RIM will release an LTE enabled PlayBook tablet on 9 August

Struggling Canadian handset vendor RIM has announced an LTE enabled version of its PlayBook tablet. The device will go on sale from 9th August in Canada, and will work on the LTE networks of all three local operators, Telus, Bell and Rogers.

This is the first PlayBook to feature integrated cellular networking, with the first version limited to wifi only.

However, as with the latest iPad, the LTE function will not operate outside Canada and the USA as its LTE frequencies are limited to 700MHz and 1700MHz, rather than the 800MHz, 1800MHz and 2600GHz frequencies used in Australia and Europe.

The new PlayBook featuers an upgraded processor now running at 1.5GHz and will only be available with 32GB of memory, but other than this and the addition of the LTE modem the specs remain the same.

Pricing for the LTE PlayBook has not yet been announced.

RIM will be hoping that the LTE PlayBook will bring with it a reversal of fortunes, with losses on RIM’s hardware sales contributing to poor recent first-quarter results that were a 33 per cent decline over the previous quarter. Its Blackberry 10 operating system for its smartphones will also not be ready until the first quarter of 2013.

The LTE Asia 2012 conference is taking place on the 18-19 September 2012 at the Marina Bay Sands, Singapore. Click here to register your interest.

RIM has been ordered to pay $147.2m to Mformation for infringing upon its wireless MDM patents

Struggling Blackberry maker Research in Motion (RIM) has been ordered to pay $147.2m to mobile device management (MDM) solutions provider Mformation for infringing upon its wireless MDM patents.

The US Federal District Court of Northern California has ruled that RIM’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) software, which is used by corporate enterprise customers to manage and secure their BlackBerry devices, infringed upon Mformation’s registered designs.

The $147.2m damages ordered were based on past sales of BES-connected BlackBerry smartphones in the US from late 2008, when the lawsuit was filed, through the trial date.

“Mformation created the mobile device management category in the late 1990s and was innovating in this area well before most of the market understood the fundamental importance of wireless mobility management,” said patent inventor and Mformation founder and CTO Rakesh Kushwaha.

“We ensured that our early innovations in device management were put through rigorous legal assessment by applying for patents on these innovations in the United States and abroad. Now these patented technologies are central to many critical mobile device management tasks being used by operators, service providers and enterprises around the world, including remote device configuration, lock/wipe and application management.”

The firm’s lead attorney, Amar Thakur of Foley & Lardner, LLP, added that the ruling showed that the legal system worked and said that “inventors everywhere should feel encouraged by the court’s decision.”

RIM said in a statement that it was disappointed by the outcome and is “evaluating all legal options”, and said that it is waiting for the trial judge to decide “certain legal issues” that may yet impact the verdict before deciding whether or not to appeal.

“RIM has worked hard for many years to independently develop its leading-edge BlackBerry technology and industry-leading intellectual property portfolio, and RIM does not believe that the Mformation patent in question is valid,” the Canadian firm said.

RIM’s recent struggles have been considerable and the firm recorded a net loss of $518m in its first fiscal quarter of 2013, which ended June 2, 2012. It has hired banks JP Morgan and RBC Capital to conduct a far-reaching strategic review of its business, and instructed them to look for partnerships for the business. RIM also announced plans earlier this year to cut a “significant” number of jobs.