In front of a packed house at the Marriott World Resort in Orlando, BlackBerry President and CEO Thorsten Heins proudly showed off the company's newest devices, including the low-end Q5 designed for developing markets, talked-up the company's updated BB10 platform (10.1) and announced that BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) was going cross-platform. 

Heins was generally upbeat, declaring this year the company's "best launch year ever," all the while gleefully taking swipes at the competition. The market will decide, of course, though this morning's celebratory keynote was clearly designed to ensure all that BlackBerry has emerged from the last few years of painful market declines and is eager to take on the competition.

Z10. Q10. BB10.1.

Heins took some of his shots at Apple and Microsoft, mocking those who suggest that "people want the desktop experience" on a tablet or smartphone. "Really," he mocked. "It simply doesn't work. That's why we built BB10 specifically for a pure mobile experience. We don't serve the desktop market. We are mobile first - the original mobile first." 

Heins then showed off the Z10, which he described as "Perfect for people who want the all-touch experience."

Heins also briefly channeled Steve Jobs: "One more thing: the famous BlackBerry keyboard," he said as he introduced the Q10. "The best physical keyboard on the market today. No one makes keyboards better than BlackBerry." (The Q10 is expected to go on sale in the U.S. by June.)

After showing off the company's two new flagship devices, Heins made the case for why BlackBerry remains relevant in the mobile world. In last four months, he noted, apps for BB10 have increased from 70,000 to "over 120,000" and one third of all developers are now targeting BlackBerry as "their prime platform," Heins claimed.

Heins also took the opportunity to introduce "BlackBerry Channels," a media-rich social messaging service. He also reminded the audience of the scope of the company's messaging service. "BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) has more than 60 million users. More than 10 billion messages are sent every day. Twice the number of any other messaging service."  Another audience wow: BBM is now "cross platform."

BlackBerry Goes Global With Q5

One surprise of the keynote was Heins' introduction of a completely new "BlackBerry device at a global price range." He held up the small, colorful Q5 - "our latest Qwerty device, specifically designed for emerging markets. I know it's going to be a big hit."

Though he did not provide much detail regarding the Q5, it appears to be a direct competitor to Nokia's popular Asha line.

BlackBerry On The Offensive

Throughout his presentation, Heins was delivering the smack downs - alluding that Apple's iOS, Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows Phone each had fundamental weaknesses - and that only BlackBerry was "mobile first." Heins suggested that BlackBerry's pure mobile focus could lead the company and its new BB10 platform to a global resurgence.

"We are working to win back our traditional customers," Heins said, "BlackBerry 10, as a platform, is entirely new. This is not an update to an old BlackBerry OS."

This will not be easy. BlackBerry (formerly RIM), finished 2012 with a 8% global smartphone market share - a significant drop from the previous year. Worse, these numbers are almost entirely based on the company's once-dominant user base of BB7-based devices. By the first quarter of this year, the company failed to even place in the top 5 of all smartphone vendors. For all Hein's positive talk, he provided little in the way of actual sales or distribution data.

Despite the many positive proclamations of BlackBerry's CEO, as the company shifts to a new touch-based and app-centric smartphone operating system its future remains in doubt. Android, iPhone or even Windows Phone may leave little opportunity for the Canadian company to move forward.

Nokia is trending up, even if it is still treading water.

The first quarter of 2013 saw Nokia ship more Lumia smartphones than any other quarter since it launched smartphones using Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform. Nokia shipped 5.6 million Lumia devices, up from 4.4 million in the final quarter of 2012. The Lumia growth is impressive considering the majority of the Windows Phone ecosystem has been dismal in comparison to its Apple and Android counterparts.

Overall, Nokia posted a small loss on the quarter of about $196 million on revenue of $7.65 billion across all of its properties. Mobile devices make up about 49.3% of Nokia’s revenue, with smart devices (such as the Lumia) about 20%. Nokia is still hemorrhaging sales in its non-smartphone division, with shipments down to 55.8 million, nearly 30 million units less than in Q4 2012 and 15 million less from Q1 2012. In terms of revenue, non-smartphones still make more money for Nokia than do Lumia devices, with 27% of the company’s overall revenue.

Nokia In Perspective

We tend to position the battle for number 3 as a clash between Nokia and BlackBerry. This, of course, is not necessarily true as Asian Android manufacturers like Huawei, ZTE and LG all ship more smartphones than either BlackBerry or Nokia. The notion is that one non-Android manufacturer will eventually rise above the heap to stake claim to the No. 3 spot behind Apple and Samsung.

Both Nokia and BlackBerry had decent first quarters. Not spectacular, but decent. In limited availability, BlackBerry shipped one million BlackBerry 10 devices and six million smartphones total. Nokia shipped 6.1 million smartphones, with about 500,000 coming from its non-Windows Phone lines including the dying Symbian. 

On the surface, the fight is even. But if we try to predict the near future, we see that BlackBerry is still relying on its long tail of BlackBerry 7 (and before) smartphones for much of its device sales while Nokia has seemingly turned the corner with Windows Phone, which account for the vast majority of its smartphone shipments. 

Neither company is going bankrupt any time soon. Both BlackBerry and Nokia reorganized their corporate structures (read: layoffs) over the last year to cut down on costs and both are basically breaking even at this point.

In a recent ReadWrite poll with about 700 respondents, 36.23% of our readers thought that BlackBerry would take the No. 3 slot while 55.63% thought Windows Phone would stake claim to the spot.

Both BlackBerry and Nokia are sitting on cash. Not an Apple-like horde of cash, but not an amount to dismiss either. Nokia’s net cash at the end of the quarter was $5.87 billion while BlackBerry is just short of $3 billion. With both companies running leaner coming out of 2012, those cash reserves should give both companies runway to create new products and marketing campaigns to push their devices and effectively compete in the global smartphone market.

BlackBerry appears to be back on track. It has stopped losing money like a Hollywood starlet with a crack addiction, finally has new products on the market and a roadmap to grow in 2013 and beyond. Thorsten Heins and company appear poised to stake a claim for what has become the most important spot in the Smartphone Wars.

The Battle for Number 3 

Two different aspects define the Battle for Number 3: platform and product. For platform, Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS are the top two mobile operating systems on the market. When it comes to product, the Apple/Samsung duopoly dominate the shipments of smartphones. 

Then there are the challengers. 

In one corner we have BlackBerry, the erstwhile Canadian smartphone manufacturer formerly known as Research In Motion. Conveniently, its platform and product go by basically the same name. In the other corner we have Windows Phone from Microsoft with smartphones built by the likes of Nokia, HTC and Samsung. Waiting in the wings for their shot at the Battle for Number 3 are upstarts like Firefox OS from Mozilla, Tizen from the Linux Foundation and Ubuntu from Canonical. Considering that none of those would-be competitors actually have a product on the market, we can safely call this a two-horse race between BlackBerry and Windows Phone. 

In the United States, BlackBerry has 5.9% of the platform market share, according to a January report from analytics firm comScore. Microsoft’s Windows Phone has 3.1%. 

For the time being BlackBerry is winning the Battle for Number 3. That may be a little misleading though as BlackBerry’s U.S. market share came from its long tail legacy BlackBerry products, not the new BlackBerry 10 operating system that completely splits from its older products. That also only includes the United States. The U.S. is often indicative of trends in the global smartphone industry but not the tell-all for overall market trends. For instance, Apple’s iPhone dominates in the U.S. but Android claims the No. 1 global operating system with strong growth overseas.

That brings us to more substantive numbers: actual smartphones shipped. In the last quarter of 2012, Samsung shipped 63.7 million smartphones. Apple shipped 47.8 million iPhones. The next three spots on the list all come from Android manufacturers with China-based Huawei in the third spot, Sony fourth and ZTE fifth, according to a January report from research firm IDC.

The goal for BlackBerry and Nokia then is to climb the ladder with their own operating systems to dislodge the Android Army (which also includes the likes of LG, Motorola, Kyocera and several smaller manufacturers). If we look at all of 2012, The Battle for Number 3 comes very close with Nokia, HTC and BlackBerry all within a couple million shipments of one another (Nokia’s strength comes on the tail of its dying Symbian platform). 

Basically, it is wide open. Thorsten Heins and BlackBerry may have steadied the ship, but it still has a lot of work to do to solidify No. 3 in both platform and product. Who will emerge as the winner? That is the topic of this week's ReadWrite Mobile poll. Vote below and let us know who you think will win (and why) in the comments. 

Thorsten Heins was supposed to be the steward that oversaw the final collapse of one of the great technology companies of the last 30 years. When Heins took over Research In Motion in early 2012, not many people gave him a lot of hope. “Thorsten Heins Is A Patsy Set Up To Fail” was my take here on ReadWrite.

At the time, Research In Motion (now BlackBerry) was grasping for straws. It had just reported half a billion dollars in quarterly, losses and co-founders and co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis were getting ousted by the RIM board — a panel they ostensibly controlled for more than a decade. At the time, Heins was seen as a front guy while Balsillie and Lazaridis pulled his strings from behind the curtain. Heins was supposed to be Norville Barnes. 

So long, Mike Lazaridis Heins Comes Into His Own

Fast forward to today. BlackBerry has a new name, a new series of good smartphones in its BlackBerry Z10 and coming Q10 devices and a streamlined and more efficient business that has renewed focus on services and applications. In its latest quarterly earnings report, BlackBerry announced $94 million in profit and said it sold a million BlackBerry Z10 devices in a little over a month, with strong channel sales likely to come. 

“Our financial transformation over the past 12 months has been outstanding,” Heins said on the company’s earnings call. “To say that it was a very challenging environment to deliver improved financial results could well be the understatement of the year. In the face of numerous challenges this past year, BlackBerry has gone from a significant operating loss in the first quarter of the year to an operating profit in the fourth quarter.”

Heins, who is prone to over enthusiasm and exaggeration, wasn't lying. The company swung to profit from a GAAP loss of $518 million and an operating loss of $118 million. In that time, BlackBerry’s liquid cash hoard rose from $2.1 billion to $2.9 billion despite losing market share to the like of Android and Apple.

Balsillie is gone. Lazaridis is retiring at the beginning of May. It appears that Heins has taken hold of BlackBerry and made it his without the puppeteers manipulating from the background.

Remaking BlackBerry In His Own Image

"Thorsten has been doing a good job at the helm, in my opinion. He got the devices to market (although a bit later than expected),” mobile analyst Jack Gold, principal at J. Gold Associates, wrote me in an email. “He’s effectively managing the bottom line (still not done but he’s on his way), and he’s made a number of management changes. The restructuring isn’t totally done yet, but he does seem to be remaking BB in his image of what it needs to be.”

Heins & Alicia Keys at BlackBerry 10 Launch

BlackBerry and Heins had a baptism by fire in 2012. The new BlackBerry 10 mobile operating system was delayed. Then it was delayed again. BlackBerry completely missed the holiday shopping season, eventually launching its new devices on Jan. 30. at an event in New York City. Between the time that Heins took over and the launch of BlackBerry 10, the company was forced to lay off thousands of workers. It got so bad that BlackBerry hired powerful Wall Street groups J.P Morgan and RBC Capital to perform a strategic review, something that pointed to a potential sale of the company.

Instead of a sale, it seems that the strategic review has led to a leaner, meaner BlackBerry. The company saw a billion dollars in savings from operating income a year before it expected to. That has led to profitability, even though BlackBerry technically lost 3 million subscribers (from 79 million to 76 million) in the most recent quarter. 

Just The Beginning

BlackBerry is not done though. Heins called the profitable quarter and launch of BlackBerry 10 just the beginning. It has yet to launch the BlackBerry Q10, which like BlackBerrys of old features a physical keyboard, though it has been testing the device on 40 carriers in 20 countries. In 2013, more BlackBerry 10 devices will be released at lower price points to take advantage of emerging markets where BlackBerry plays particularly well, like the Middle East and Africa. 

BlackBerry Z10

“Everyone at BlackBerry understands that there is more work to do. Delivering BlackBerry 10 and a profitable quarter is just the starting line, not the finish line,” Heins said.

Through it all, Heins comes out looking like a hero. Instead of a patsy, he has superseded both Balsillie and Lazaridis and given the BlackBerry tangible hope for a profitable future. It may only be the beginning, but Heins’s first year of hardship is over. 

“Of course, the next two-to-four quarters will give us a better understanding of how successful he’s been, but so far I give him a pretty good grade,” Gold said.

Lazaridis photo courtesy of Wikipedia 

As BlackBerry steers its ship to hopefully happier seas, the smartphone maker is struggling to gain momentum. In its first quarterly earnings report since changing its name from Research In Motion to BlackBerry, the Canadian company announced stagnant earnings on the strength of six million smartphones shipped and 370,000 BlackBerry PlayBook tablets. Total revenue was $2.7 billion, down about 2% from the previous quarter and 46% (from $4.2 billion) from the same quarter a year ago.

BlackBerry said it shipped one million BlackBerry 10 devices in the quarter. All things considered, that is not bad. The Canadian fiscal quarter ended March 2. The BlackBerry Z10 and Q10 (which is not yet available) were announced on January 30 and did not shipping to its first round of countries (Canada, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates) for more than a week afterwards. BlackBerry has been expanding its roster of countries where the BlackBerry is shipping through the end of February and into March. The United States has finally seeing the touchscreen BlackBerry Z10 to major carriers within the past week.

BlackBerry's revenue was generated 61% from hardware, 36% for services and 3% for software and other revenue. Services for BlackBerry include many of its enterprise and government services, such as the BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

"We have implemented numerous changes at BlackBerry over the past year and those changes have resulted in the Company returning to profitability in the fourth quarter," said Thorsten Heins, President and CEO. "With the launch of BlackBerry 10, we have introduced the newest and what we believe to be the most innovative mobile computing platform in the market today. Customers love the device and the user experience, and our teams and partners are now focused on getting those devices into the hands of BlackBerry consumer and enterprise customers." 

While the quarterly earnings from BlackBerry are not outstanding, it should be noted that the company does not appear to be hemorrhaging money any longer. BlackBerry actually made $94 million in profit this quarter. That can be a little deceptive as BlackBerry has gone through massive layoffs and reorganization, but it seems that CEO Thorsten Heins has the company running lean and, for the first time in a long time, shipping actual products and generating buzz. 

BlackBerry also announced that its co-founder Mike Lazaridis is leaving the company and will retire May 1, 2013. Lazaridis leaves less than a month after his co-founder Jim Balsillie sold all of his stock and left the company. 

In June 2007, Apple launched the first iPhone, marking a new era in corporate mobility. Before the fashionable mini-computer, people used smartphones for voice, texting and email. With the iPhone and its remarkable touchscreen users could also be entertained with music, video and games. Corporate executives became so attached to their hip device, they wanted to use it for business, so they bullied IT departments into providing access to email and corporate data. Employees soon joined their bosses and the bring-your-own-device trend began.

Six years later, what started out with one smartphone has grown into an army - far too much for the Wild West atmosphere of BYOD to continue as it has been. Many companies that have allowed BYOD will soon be pulling back on such freedoms. While BYOD may not die altogether, it will carry stricter restrictions meant to finally get this trend under control.

The Fate Of BYOD

"BYOD is clearly an important trend, but we expect it to plateau in the coming one to two years as enterprises decide that the cost and security issues associated with unlimited BYOD do not warrant the anarchy and increased support costs it has often caused," a recent report from tech analyst J.Gold Associates said.

Where the iPhone use to be in a class by itself, the smartphone now competes with Android phones from Samsung, HTC, LG, Sony and 10 other vendors.  In addition, there is the BlackBerry and multiple devices running Microsoft's Windows Phone.

In 2010, Apple added the iPad to the chaos, creating a whole new market for tablet computers that brought lots of competitors from manufacturers in the Android camp.

From the beginning, BYOD was a challenge for IT departments, which had to wrestle with data security, device manageability, support and app control. Nevertheless, enterprises went along with the trend and the majority allowed at least some workers to use their personal devices for business.

But configuration, workflow and security issues were always making things difficult for IT. For instance, cyber-criminals saw an easy target in Android - with so many devices running older versions of the OS, hackers could target known vulnerabilities that were left unpatched by manufacturers and wireless carriers.

BYOD Limits

A survey of enterprises that allow employees to use their own notebooks, smartphones and tablets found that nearly half had experienced a security breach. As a result, more than 40% of the companies either restricted mobile data access or installed security software, according to the poll of more than 400 IT professionals and chief executives conducted by Decisive Analytics and released in August 2012.

Despite the breaches, only 12% of companies outright cancelled BYOD programs, an indication that most remained committed to providing flexibility to employees, while moving toward imposing rules.

Indeed, Gold found that companies are realizing "the current mostly wide-open, laissez fare approach to BYOD is not sustainable longer term, and that more controls and better strategy are needed."

As companies clamp down on BYOD, employees will likely find they will have to surrender their devices in order for IT departments to install technology to protect corporate data and communications. At the same time, manufacturers are providing more enterprise features in order to ensure their products get approved for work and play.

Samsung recently launched technology called SAFE that the vendor boasts brings enterprise-class security to selected devices. People who buy the Galaxy S III or S 4 smartphones, the Galaxy Note II smartphone/tablet hybrid or the Note 10.1 tablet have the option of including SAFE, which provides a container for corporate data and email in order to separate it from personal applications.

BlackBerry, which has always been considered the gold standard in device security, has added similar data-separating technology in the new Z10.

In time, enterprises are likely to give the nod to those devices that can meet the demands of consumers and businesses and shun those that don't. So instead of BYOD, the policy of the future will be BYODA, or bring-your-own-device-for-approval.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Earlier this week, BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins called the iPhone outdated. Did he have a point?

Speaking to The Australian Financial Review, Heins said, “The user interface on the iPhone, with all due respect for what this invention was all about is now five years old.”

It is hard to argue with that particular piece of logic. Yes, from a pure aesthetic base, the UI of the iPhone very much looks the same as it did in 2007. But the underlying operating system for the iPhone, iOS, has seen some fairly dramatic overhauling since the release of the first iPhone in July 2007. Apple released the App Store in 2008, unleashed voice activated virtual assistant Siri with the iPhone 4S in 2011, instituted deep Facebook and Twitter integration and killed off native integration of Google Maps in 2012. Certainly, Mr. Heins, the iPhone is quite different now than it was in 2007.

Right?

“Apple did a fantastic job in bringing touch devices to market... They did a fantastic job with the user interface, they are a design icon. There is a reason why they were so successful, and we actually have to admit this and respect that,” Heins told The Australian Financial Review. “History repeats itself again I guess... the rate of innovation is so high in our industry that if you don’t innovate at that speed you can be replaced pretty quickly.”

Of course, Heins has his own agenda. While dissing the iPhone, he is also schilling for his own brand-new BlackBerry 10 smartphones. 

“The point is that you can never stand still. It is true for us as well. Launching BB10 just put us on the starting grid of the wider mobile computing grand prix, and now we need to win it,” Heins said.

The irony, of course, is that one reason that BlackBerry is in its own current poor position is because of lack of innovation and failure to bring new and exciting products to market. On the other hand, Heins may be a bit of an expert in the matter. As the CEO of BlackBerry (and the COO of Research In Motion before his ascension), he very well knows what it looks like when a company fails to keep up with the market and falls behind the curve.

Many people feel that the iPhone has fallen behind the quality and functionality of Google’s Android operating system. Android has long had hardware capabilities that Apple has not deigned to provide, such as NFC, and has become both a creative and useful operating system. From resizable widgets to camera software to Google Now, many top technorati (such as former Apple shills Guy Kawasaki, Robert Scoble and Andy Ihnatko) have switched to Android because they find it to be more capable than the iPhone. 

ReadWrite’s consummate Apple fan, John Paul Titlow, believes that Apple next version of iOS needs to be a game changer or the bleeding will continue. 

With each upgrade to Android, iPhone owners laughed as the platform seemingly struggled to keep up with Apple's bulletproof user experience. And for a while, it did struggle. But slowly, that changed. Next thing we knew, Android commanded 75% of the smartphone market. Today, instead of mocking Android, many prominent iPhone lovers are switching to Google.

Of course, there are still lots of things to love about the iPhone. The industrial design is next to none (the iPhone 5 is truly a beauty). Its camera can go head-to-head with anybody on the market and its App Store still serves the highest quality of apps to the masses. 

We put the question to you, readers. Is the iPhone outdated? Take the poll below and let us know your thoughts in the comments. 

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

BlackBerry executives are used to bad news. Whether it's losing contracts with large enterprises or watching the company's stock price plummet, it has not been a pleasant couple of years for the company formerly known as Research In Motion.

One of the most consistent sources of good news to BlackBerry over the years has been the fact that the United States government remained addicted to BlackBerry smartphones and the security and reliability the platform provides. 

Scary Report

So imagine the shock echoing through the halls of Blackberry headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario, Thursday morning when a report surfaced that the U.S. Department of Defense was dropping Blackberry 10 smartphones in favor of iOS devices. Specifically, the DoD was said be ordering hundreds of thousands of iOS devices from Apple. According to a report from gadget blog Electronista, the DoD was set to buy 120,000 iPads, 100,000 iPad Minis, 200,000 iPod Touches and a 210,000 iPhones. This could have been a big blow to one of BlackBerry's last customer strongholds.

Good thing for BlackBerry that the report appears to be inaccurate and overblown. 

According to a statement emailed to ReadWrite from a spokesperson at the public affairs office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense:

The department is aware of recent reporting that asserts it is 'dropping' BlackBerry. This reporting is in error. The department recently released its mobility strategy and supporting implementation plan, which clarifies we are moving towards a mobile management capability that supports a variety of devices, to include BlackBerry. As clarified in the recent release of our Commercial Mobile Device Implementation Plan, we are working towards establishing a multi-vendor environment in support of the DoD mobility strategy.

Going Multivendor

Essentially, the DoD is going multi-vendor. That will include iOS, Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry. This is not a new development, as many government agencies have been looking to break free of the BlackBerry bank and go multi-vendor for several years. Still not great news for Blackberry, but pretty much par for the course.

Reports claiming the DoD was going straight iOS can be very, very damaging for BlackBerry. Even if the report is basically wrong, as the DoD spokesperson insists. Smartphone platforms succeed as much on public perception as they do on quality, marketing and advertising. BlackBerry reacted to the story by issuing a statement through its public relations agency attempting to dispel the rumor.

Our work with the U.S. Department of Defense is going well and the U.S. Department of Defense is moving forward with testing of BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 and the new BlackBerry Z10 smartphone.  We are currently working with the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and anticipate Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIG) and Security Requirement Guide (SRG) approval for the BlackBerry Device Service, BlackBerry 10 and BlackBerry PlayBook by early April. BlackBerry was the first to go through the new SRG process by the Defense Department and will be the first to successfully come out of it.

Spin Control

This type of urgent spin control is unusual for BlackBerry. The company normally does not go out of its way to react to rumors. There have been dozens of instances in the past several years of large enterprises or government agencies “ditching BlackBerry” for the iPhone or Android and even Windows Phone. BlackBerry has not deigned to respond to the vast majority of those reports - true or not.

This one is different. Not only are we talking about the U.S. federal government, it is the Department of Defense, by far the largest of executive agencies. When it comes to IT at the federal level, many agencies follow the lead of the DoD. This is a story that BlackBerry needed to set straight before its other government partners decide they want to jump ship too. 

The DoD spokesperson said that the agency is in the process of implementing a system that will support 100,000 multi-vendor devices by February 2014. The department said that it currently has 600,000 commercial devices in use, including 470,000 BlackBerries, 41,000 “Apple operating systems” (not specified between Mac OS X and iOS but presumably those are iPhones and iPads) and 8,700 Android operating systems.

BlackBerry’s newest smartphone is finally coming to the United States. 

According to a press release from wireless carrier AT&T, the BlackBerry Z10 will be available to consumers in its store on March 22. Pre-orders for the Z10 will start tomorrow, Tuesday March 12. The BlackBerry Z10 will be available for $199 with a two-year contract.

The timing of the release aligns with what the company said during the BlackBerry 10 launch event at the end of January. The first wave of BlackBerry Z10 first hit consumers in the United Kingdom, Canada and United Arab Emirates the week after BlackBerry announced the devices. BlackBerry said that U.S. consumers would see the BlackBerry Z10 “in March.”

It is nice to see BlackBerry (the company formerly known as Research In Motion) actually hold to its promises these days. The BlackBerry 10 devices were already pushed back from the company’s original launch dates three times in 2012 before settling on Jan. 30, 2013. Due to complicated review processes that the U.S. carriers impose on new smartphones (which complicates coordinating a single release date on multiple carriers), the U.S. was not part of the first wave of countries to get the Z10. But, BlackBerry said March and it has actually lived up to its word. At least on AT&T. 

The Z10 will also be available to U.S. consumers on T-Mobile and Verizon. T-Mobile is expected to ship devices starting this week while Verizon has not verified when it will begin selling the smartphone. Sprint is not expected to carry the device. 

AT&T said that it will also be serving the BlackBerry Enterprise Server 10 to its enterprise and government clients.

BlackBerry is issuing the first software update to its BlackBerry 10 operating system this morning to address usability issues concerning apps, camera, calendar, contacts, browser and, perhaps most importantly, battery life.

Apps Optimization & Camera Upgrade

The biggest complaints that initial users of the BlackBerry Z10 have voiced have revolved around app performance. Many apps (especially those ported from Android) are buggy on BlackBerry 10 and tend to lag and crash with moderate use. BlackBerry is addressing this problem in the update, saying it has “improved performance for 3rd party applications.” BlackBerry was not specific on exactly how 3rd party apps will be optimized going forward.

BlackBerry also told users to keep an eye out for big new app launches coming in March, such as messaging platform WhatsApp. The company will feature new apps going forward by highlighting new entries to BlackBerry World every week with an announcement on Wednesdays. The first “App Wednesday” this week featured apps like “Where’s My Water” from Disney and the Slacker Internet Radio app. 

Another issue that BlackBerry is addressing is the camera app, which was performing poorly in low-light scenarios. The camera on the Z10 is serviceable but not without flaws (not many smartphone manufacturers can claim a camera without flaws) and it is astute of BlackBerry to address many of these features before the Z10 launches in the United States.

Browser, Battery Improvements

The browser has been tweaked to improve how BlackBerry 10 handles video playback. BlackBerry has also issued improvements to the phone, calendar and contacts apps as well as features fixes for Gmail calendars and user interface improvements for call logging in BlackBerry Hub, the operating system's central messaging system. BlackBerry has also made it easier to import contacts from online sources, a glaring hole in the initial release. 

As far as battery life goes, most users have complained that their new Z10 handsets were only getting seven to nine hours of performance, or enough for a basic workday. That is basically in line with what BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins said about the BlackBerry Z10 battery at the keynote launch of the device, but the actual experience has been inadequate for many. BlackBerry says it has made 60 different battery-saving improvements to BlackBerry 10 and that heavy users should see longer average usage per charge cycle. 

The update will be delivered over-the-air and be about 150 MB in size. The timing of the update will vary by what carrier BlackBerry 10 owners use.

Have you received the BlackBerry 10 update? Does it address the issues you have had with the operating system to date? Let us know in the comments. 

Former BlackBerry co-CEO Jim Balsillie has entered his own vote of no confidence in the company he helped run into the ground back when it was known as Research in Motion.

In an SEC filing today, Balsillie revealed that he sold off every single BlackBerry share he owned last year. He used to hold 26.8 million shares, which at the end of last year would have been worth $318.1 million. As of Dec. 31, 2012, though, he owned zero shares -- worth, of course, zero dollars.

Financially, that's already been a bad move. BlackBerry shares closed at $11.87 on Dec. 31. Today, they're trading around $14.80 -- up almost six percent since news of Balsillie's sale hit. Which of course could just be coincidence.

Balsillie had already become something of an unperson around BlackBerry following his departure as BlackBerry co-CEO. He resigned from BlackBerry's board of directors almost a year ago, wasn't introduced during the keynote launch of BlackBerry 10 in New York City in January (although Mike Lazaridis, who also gave up the co-CEO reins more than a year ago, was), and has mostly remained silent since stepping down in early 2012.

Now he's not even a shareholder. Lazaridis, by the way, remains vice chair of the board and still held 29.9 million BlackBerry shares as of Dec. 31, currently worth $442.5 million.

Since Balsillie's sell-off, of course, the company has reinvented its core product with the BlackBerry 10 operating system and announced two new smartphones, the Z10 and Q10. It's hard to see Balsillie's move as exhibiting much faith in BlackBerry's new direction.

Top photo courtesy Wikipedia Commons

I tried to love the new BlackBerry Z10. I really did.

The operating system is interesting, it handles communications well and has generally decent hardware. I planned on making the Z10 my personal device for at least a month to really get a good understanding of what it is and where BlackBerry is going.

I couldn’t pull it off.

This is the ultimate test of a mobile device: When you live with it, does it allow you to do everything you need to do in a seamless and facile manner? When it came down to it, the BlackBerry 10 could not satisfy that essential requirement. So, three weeks prematurely, I pulled the SIM card out of the Z10 and put it back into my Android phone.

And breathed a sigh of relief. 

I reserve the right to go back to the Z10 in the future when it may bebetter suited to my needs. But for now, my Android phone is just more… useful.

Here is a breakdown of the things I missed most about Android while living with BlackBerry 10.

Maps

BlackBerry 10 does not have a native maps app but rather licenses its maps to a third party, rumored to be TomTom. The overall experience leaves much to be desired. 

The best test of how a smartphone handles your needs is to travel with it. When you are in a new city and need the maps app to tell you where you are and where you are going, the location needs to be as granular as possible. It also needs to accurately and efficiently perform search functions. BlackBerry’s maps app does both of those things... just not very well. Especially when you compare it to Google Maps in Android which is probably the most refined digital maps available - with Google’s robust search capabilities baked right in.  Left: Google Maps on Android Right: BlackBerry maps trying to load.

BlackBerry maps are slow (over LTE and/or Wi-Fi) to load, do not track well in real time and are difficult to search. If you are walking down the street and need to know when to turn a corner, you have to stop and let the app catch up.

If it even works. It is not just a slow app, it is flawed and buggy, sometimes failing to load at all (see screen shot above). This is a fundamental failure of performance. 

Apps & Performance

Facebook "app" on BlackBerry If you are a current or former BlackBerry user, you are really used to the “hard reset.” That is when you pop the back off your device, take the battery out and put it back in. BlackBerry users had to perform this routine whenever apps would not load, the operating system would hang or crash or the device would not receive notifications. Lags, crashes and poor performance were an accepted matter of course on BlackBerry devices for years. People learned to live with it.

BlackBerry has eradicated a lot of those problems in BlackBerry 10. Just not all of them. The frustrating feeling that is all too familiar to BlackBerry users when something just does not work remains alive and well on the Z10. 

There are a couple reasons for this. The first is BlackBerry’s app strategy. Yes, BlackBerry has done well to ensure a good choice of apps at launch by allowing developers to port Android apps to BlackBerry World. But those ported apps do not always work all that well. BlackBerry 10 also relies on Web apps to fill in the gaps where neither native BlackBerry apps or ported Android apps are available.

The biggest, and buggiest, examples of this issue are found in BlackBerry's YouTube and Facebook apps. The YouTube “app” is little more than a mobile Web-app with a shortcut pinned to the home screen. It performs about as well as can be expected for a enough for a slow Web app but it is far from optimal. 

The Facebook app is the poster child for BlackBerry 10's apps problem. First trouble indicator: It wasn't built by Facebook, but rather by BlackBerry (Research In Motion Limited is the technical developer name as it was made before the rebrand to BlackBerry). It is based on a previous version of Facebook’s Android app -from before Facebook took its Android app native to improve performance. That means that BlackBerry’s Facebook app is, more or less, just the m.facebook.com site with an Android wrapper ported to BlackBerry. The basic functions work well enough, but if you go to a different section, say an Events page, it will leave the Facebook app and open Facebook’s mobile page. This approach creates a lot of moving parts within the app - and none of them work particularly well.

Premium Apps & The Android Experience

Full screen widgets are a luxury Android users may not realize quite how much they rely on Google apps until they change platforms. That includes the likes of Gmail, Search, Talk (GChat) and even often-overlooked functions like automatic photo uploading to Google Plus. These apps are the backbone of the Android Experience and make life easier and more connected. 

Then there is Google Play. Say what you want about the quality of Android apps on the whole, at least the app store has what you need. For me, that means go-to apps like Spotify and RunKeeper, Zite and Voxer, Uber and Ingress. These apps are not present in BlackBerry World and none of the publishers have said whether or not they will build (or port) to the BB 10 platform or not. Even while I was living with the Z10, I still carried my old Android phone just to download Spotify playlists so I could listen to music. 

To be fair, it is still early in BlackBerry 10’s life cycle. These apps could arrive in the next couple of months and be terrific. But they are not there now. 

Other aspects of the Android Experience not present in BlackBerry 10 are the notifications system and widgets. Android's pull-down notifications menu is the best in the mobile industry and has been copied, to a certain extent, by almost everybody, including Apple and BlackBerry.

The recent apps screen of BlackBerry 10 also does not substitute for Android’s customizable widgets. The ability to turn an entire home screen into a calculator or to do a voice recording straight from the Evernote widget are under-appreciated features of Android. You miss them when they are gone.

More Time In The Distillery

Going back to Android after living with the Z10 is not a complete condemnation of BlackBerry 10. It is just a sign that while BlackBerry has made some great strides with the BlackBerry 10 operating system, it has not yet gone quite far enough. The corner-cutting with apps, the lags and bugs found in various aspects of the OS, the crashing and hanging can all be fixed.

The problem for BlackBerry is that Android used to have all these same types of problems as well - and it took years of fine tuning to eradicate them. Locked in a death struggle to stay relevant in the fast-moving mobile market, BlackBerry does not have years to smooth out the kinks in BlackBerry 10. 

BlackBerry is on a roll. 

No, really. 

The company formally known as Research In Motion announced today that the Canadian launch its new BlackBerry smartphones were the best ever for the company. In an emailed statement, BlackBerry CEO and president Thorsten Heins said sales were 50% better than any other Canadian launch - and three times the company’s best previous performance in the United Kingdom. 

BlackBerry did not provide data for the third country the new smartphones launched, United Arab Emirates. 

The full statement from BlackBerry is below:

“In Canada, yesterday was the best day ever for the first day of a launch of a new BlackBerry smartphone. In fact, it was more than 50% better than any other launch day in our history in Canada,” said Heins. “In the UK, we have seen close to three times our best performance ever for the first week of sales for a BlackBerry smartphone."

Windows Phone will succeed because Microsoft simply believes in it. It's a trophy, not a life raft.

ReadWrite's Dan Rowinski contends that BlackBerry will remain the No. 3 mobile platform, behind Google's Android and Apple's iOS. Hogwash. At this point, RIM could hand out a free puppy to every American who buys one of its phones, and it wouldn't make a dent in the population at the local animal shelter.

(See also: Why BlackBerry 10 Will Beat Windows Phone: It's Cool Again!)

RIM - excuse me, BlackBerry - executives are frantically trying to pole their sinking platform away from a tidal wave of Apple and Android phones, before the entire company itself is swept away. BlackBerry 10 is an "oh shit!" product, the panicked reaction of a company which grew fast, grew big and grew complacent. Meanwhile, Apple and the Android legions ate its lunch.

Windows Phone, however, stands on its merits.

Big, Bold, Beautiful Design

There's simply no way that anyone will confuse a Windows phone with an iPhone or an Android device. The bright, lively splashes of color that make up the Live Tiles interface entice you to play with them, and I simply love how the People widget refreshes with the most recent avatar pictures of your friends. Each widget can be resized dynamically, so you can align them in Android-like, "Space Invaders" rows, or else pick a few to dominate your screen.

Best-In-Class Camera

I've tried out enough smartphones to be quite impressed with the HTC 8X's camera - which, incidentally, easily surpasses my older HTC Sensation. While not good enough to replace a dedicated camera, some of my best pictures from my recent Dubai trip were actually taken with the HTC 8X - perhaps not of the quality of an single-lens-reflex (SLR) camera, but crisp, clear and without the smearing often associates with a smartphone camera.

The camera in the first BlackBerry 10 phone, the Z10, was dubbed an "abject failure" for its low-light performance, and Crackberry's test files shouldn't exactly fill BlackBerry fans with hope. 

Apps

Quite frankly, there are two things consumers want from their smartphones: quality pictures, which the Z10 already fails at, and apps. But Dan Rowinski himself already reported that 40% of the 70,000 apps in the BlackBerry World app store are just Android ports. 

On the Windows Phone platform, we know that Microsoft published 75,000 apps in 2012 alone, so the total number of apps tops BlackBerry by at least a slight margin. Neither Windows Phone 8 nor BlackBerry has the reach of either iOS or Android; most apps seem to be published first for iOS and Android, with the other smartphone platforms lucky to pick up the scraps later. On the other hand, I can use popular consumer apps like Slacker on my Windows Phone. On BlackBerry? Not so much. 

And if we look at "apps" as synonymous with "ecosystem," Windows Phone 8 wins hands-down. Windows Phone. PC. Xbox. Surface. They all talk to each other, and the game "Skulls of the Shogun," released last week, can be played on all four. BlackBerry stands alone, and the few mobile ecosystems that I can think of that tried the same thing are Symbian and WebOS. Yep, you know what happened to them.

Keyboard

Normally, this would be a category I would be prepared to hand to the BlackBerry crowd. Mobile keyboards have been BlackBerry's traditional strength. But hang on - BlackBerry makes suggestions by hovering the suggested word over the letters on the keyboard? Windows Phone works the way people expect it to. I still prefer Android's predictive guesswork, but Windows Phone isn't half bad.

User Experience

I'm not totally in love with Microsoft's "one app at a time" approach, but I can live with it. And there are some truly delightful touches: the Live Tiles are one, and using my Facebook photos as my lock screensaver brings a smile to my face every time I unlock the phone.

Reputation

At this point, within the United States, RIM's name is poison. That's why the company changed it to BlackBerry. Granted, I've been hard on Microsoft Windows 8 and its other products, too. But while Windows Phone *is surviving, RIM's diving like a dead duck. 

Windows Phone is a fresh, new brand. Showcasing Jessica Alba - a celebrity and mom - as one of the faces of the brand was inspired.

The Enterprise

Yes, BlackBerry has a strong case here. When all else fails, BlackBerry can retreat to its walled fort, the enterprise. But the days when corporations could hand out whatever cell phones it wanted employees to use are ending. The practice of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) favors devices with more consumer appeal, which includes Windows Phone.

Why Windows Phone Will Beat BlackBerry

Ever since I tried out the HTC 8X at Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 launch, I've been torn between it and the Android-powered Galaxy Nexus. In fact, if they had used the same SIM-card form factor (the HTC 8X uses a micro-SIM, while the Nexus uses a standard SIM) I may have switched. They both run on T-Mobile, my network provider. 

RIM has the stink of failure hanging over it; it's no great stretch to imagine that if BB10 fails, down goes the entire company. Microsoft's already tried and failed with its own social phone, the Kin, and kept on swinging. This time around, Microsoft is going to put the "bury" in BlackBerry. As in six feet under.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

Last week, in an attempt to get the contacts on my old Android transferred to the new BlackBerry Z10, I stopped at my local AT&T store to see if they could transfer them. It was like a rock star just walked into the room.

The rock star wasn’t me. I am not that cool. It was the Z10. 

The AT&T employees (who couldn’t actually transfer the contacts since BlackBerry 10 is so new) fawned over the device like it was a favorite cousin come home after years lost at sea. They took pictures of it and sent them to a friend. They bet each other they could figure out how to use the gesture-based navigation. The reaction was a little surprising.

BlackBerry Retains Brand Loyalty

I could have brought any number of unreleased smartphones in for the same purpose and not have elicited such a reaction. BlackBerry, as much or more than Android or iOS, still elicits excitement and loyalty. And here is the BlackBerry Z10, the prodigal son come back to the fold.

People are so excited for the new BlackBerry smartphones that I found one selling on eBay for $1,500 last week. Outside of a pre-released iPhone, what other smartphone manufacturer can generate that kind of anticipation? Certainly not anyone building Windows Phone device. 

This brand loyalty, dormant for years while Research In Motion languished under its own ineptitude, is among the reasons that BlackBerry will firmly take the No. 3 spot behind the iPhone and Android in the smartphone wars. Despite the arguments of ReadWrite's Mark Hachman, BlackBerry's major competitor for that position, Windows Phone, can claim no such loyalty. 

(See also: Why Windows Phone Will Be No. 3: Apps & Microsoft.)

In fact, BlackBerry has been keeping up with Nokia and Windows Phone in terms of global shipments even without BlackBerry 10. 

That’s about three million units behind Nokia, which also still sells Symbian smartphones and the Asha series (which straddles the line between feature phone and smartphone). Granted, IDC’s numbers do not include Windows Phone sales from Samsung or HTC, but both of those are negligible according to earnings announcements from both companies. 

If you are rooting for Windows Phone to join Apple and Google on top of the smartphone heap, you might be a bit worried that a sleeping giant has just woken up. It may not be as big and bad as the Apple/Android giants, but its potential remains bigger than Microsoft’s on the global market.

So let’s put aside the posturing and get to the nitty-gritty of why BlackBerry 10 will ultimately win out over Windows Phone:

The Same, But Different

BlackBerry 10 takes the things people like about the user experience on Android and iOS and makes them unique. The gesture-based control takes a while to figure out, but once you have it down, it is fairly intuitive. Windows Phone is a lot of scroll, scroll, go left to right and scroll some more. The BlackBerry 10 user experience is interesting and fluid, not stationary and flat like Windows Phone. 

What BlackBerry has done with its UI feels fundamentally different while also retaining certain similarities from the Android/iOS environment. This will help transition people to the operating system without the shell shock often felt when first encountering the Hubs & Tiles environment of Windows Phone. There is nothing wrong with Hubs & Tiles, but I have seen people on more than one occasion pick up the device, ask "What is this?" and then put it back down in bewilderment. 

Apps Ecosystems

I am not going to spend a lot of time on this because, ultimately, it will be a non-factor between the two operating systems. Ultimately, the two app ecosystems will grow side by side with the winner (by volume, at least) determined by which devices sell better.

In the meantime, essentially, it is a wash. Yes, 40% of BlackBerry apps are Android ports and BlackBerry encouraged developers to wrap their apps for its platform. 

Microsoft essentially did the same thing. There are very few mobile app developers that actively want to write in .NET and C# to build native apps for a platform that still has relatively few users. Most developers would rather write in a language where it can serve multiple purposes, and in that case the mobile-Web, HTML5/CSS and Javascript (through Android) support of BlackBerry 10 becomes a more viable alternative.

The Enterprise

Enterprise mobility used to be synonymous with BlackBerry. That's less true now, but very few large organizations have chosen Windows Phone as their primary mobile operating system. Government and enterprise users would either hang on to old BlackBerrys or go to the iPhone. You still see lots of people who carry two phones, one BlackBerry for work and one iPhone/Android for personal use.

BlackBerry seeded BlackBerry 10 phones to large enterprises and federal government to rebuild the enterprise base that has to be the foundation of what it is built from. Enterprises still trust BlackBerry and are among some of the most relieved clients now that the company finally has some viable smartphone options coming down the pipe. 

Distribution

Distribution is a critcal factor in the smartphone wars. One reason that Nokia and Windows Phone flounder in the U.S. is because of carrier exclusivity and the lack of cross-platform options. Nokia needs to be more like Samsung and use the shotgun approach to smartphone deployment. Instead, it dabbles with a Lumia 920 at AT&T, a Lumia 610 on T-Mobile. This approach is haphazard and ineffective.

BlackBerry has tested BlackBerry 10 smartphones with 120 carriers worldwide. It has all four major U.S. carriers lined up to sell the Z10 (come mid-March) and likely the Q10 as well. BlackBerry did not get caught in the same distribution traps that Nokia did with Windows Phone. 

Why BlackBerry Will Beat Windows Phone 8

The fact of the matter is that we are arguing over No. 3. Really, I could see either platform taking over the spot. Yet Windows Phone has been out since November 2011 and it still has not gained significant market share.

Sorry Mark, BlackBerry has the upper hand in mobile over Microsoft. The device is unique but familiar, the distribution philosophy is better, it has an enterprise base and brand loyalty of millions of former users. What BlackBerry does not have that Microsoft does is money. BlackBerry cannot afford for BlackBerry 10 to fail, while Microsoft can do with Windows Phone what it did with Xbox and just keep pumping money into it until it is successful.

But, if BlackBerry 10 does prove successful, the window for Windows Phone may just shut down.

Photo by Dan Rowinski.

BlackBerry is going to hit the Super Bowl hard on Sunday with a new advertising campaign for its new BlackBerry 10 devices. The actual commercials have yet been released, but if the BlackBerry 10 launch event in New York City earlier this week was any indication, it will be likely over the top.

Will new “global creative director” Alicia Keys make an appearance? I would lay good money on it. Will BlackBerry take pot shots at Apple and Samsung? That is a pretty good bet too.

BlackBerry sent over a still shot sneak peek of an image (above) for the commercial. Nothing like giving people a glimpse and holding the rest back to drum up al little anticipation, huh?

What is it? Looks like a rainbow smoke explosion on a city sidewalk. But what the heck would a rainbow smoke explosion be doing in a BlackBerry commercial?

This is what the company had to say:

BlackBerry will be featured in Super Bowl XLVII on Sunday for the first time ever. This unique execution will be part of a broad marketing campaign about the totally re-designed, re-engineered and re-invented BlackBerry. As part of this activity, we are sharing a still image of the Super Bowl commercial with our social channels – including 30 millions fans on Facebook and Twitter – to draw them into a conversation about BlackBerry 10 during this highly social event.

So, BlackBerry basically admits to pandering to its social audience. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but couldn't it have chosen a more revealing image?

What do you think it is? Let us know in the comments. 

The exuberance of the young man sitting next to me was hard not to note. We were sitting in the front row of the press section at the BlackBerry 10 keynote launch in New York City on Wednesday awaiting the start of the show - and he was practically bouncing in his seat. He was a mobile developer that had somehow acquired a press pass for a small blog and was at his first-ever smartphone launch event. 

It had been so long since Research In Motion (now BlackBerry) had done anything significant that it was difficult to remember that the company once boasted perhaps the most loyal customer base of any mobile platform on the planet. As the show started (with a weird E! News style introduction of Blackberry VP of developer relations Alec Saunders), the young man started to clap with the rest of the crowd. I had to remind him that reporters do not clap, root or otherwise show emotion. At least at these types of events. There is no cheering in the press box. 

He started peppering me with questions and predictions. “Is BlackBerry going to succeed? How could it not with the great new devices being launched? I think they just set themselves up for years to come.”

I shook my head and shrugged. I noted to him the last lines of my article from the day before on BlackBerry’s keys to success.

“RIM could do everything right with this launch and still be dead at the end of the year, sold off for pieces and patents, taken over by Microsoft or somebody like that. There is no guarantee of success,” I said. 

That shut him up. At least for a little while. 

Now that we know more about the BlackBerry 10 platform, let's revisit BlackBerry’s keys for success and see whether or not that eager young man was on to something.

The Complications Of Distribution

Several people asked me during the BlackBerry launch event how long it would take before we know if BlackBerry 10 is a success.

“End of Q3 this year,” I replied. 

That gives BlackBerry two full quarters to get its distribution down and a little more than six months to get the marketing message out to smartphone buyers whose contracts will be up and are shopping for new devices. If RIM posts two good quarters (or two bad) come September, we will have a pretty good idea of its near term future. 

On the distribution front, BlackBerry 10 started both good and bad. Consumers in Canada, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates (an apparent stronghold for BlackBerry) will see almost immediate availability. The rest of the world should see availability in regional carriers by the end of February. 

Then there is the ever-important market in the United States. While all four major U.S. carriers have said they will carry the new BlackBerry 10 devices (Verizon said the Z10 will cost $199 on a two-year contract), there is no firm launch date for either of the new BlackBerry smartphones in the U.S. BlackBerry president and CEO Thorsten Heins told reporters that the full-touch Z10 will be available sometime in March, while the physical keyboard Q10 will come sometime in April. 

Many of the U.S. reporters in the room let out a collective “WTF?!”

But those familiar with how the U.S. carriers work were not surprised. Smartphone manufacturers and the carriers tend to have a complicated relationship. The carriers try to force manufacturers into making concessions on software, price, availability and exclusivity all the while running extensive network tests on new devices so as to protect their precious (and often fragile) cellular networks. Any smartphone manufacturer that wants to make a unified launch of a device across all four carriers at the same time is going to run into a logistical nightmare. 

ReadWrite asked AT&T about the delay of bringing the BlackBerry Z10 in the U.S., noting Heins’s comments on the complicated relationship. AT&T declined to comment. 

This is very big deal. As recent history has shown, launch delays in the U.S. can sound the death knell for a fledgling smartphone. Look at the delays plaguing phones that have ended up performing poorly in the U.S. - the HTC One X (Apple injunction), Nokia Lumia 900 (AT&T exclusivity and months between announcement and delivery) and Nexus 4 (supply issues between Google and LG) - and you start to get the idea. 

Heins announces the end of Research In Motion

Assessing The App Ecosystem

We learned on Wednesday that the BlackBerry World app store has 70,000 apps for the launch of BlackBerry 10, with 1,000 “premium” publisher partners. We also learned that 40% of those apps (about 28,000) are “ports” from Android. BlackBerry World also has TV, music and movie content in its app store, similar to Google Play, the Apple App Store and Windows Phone Marketplace. 

The port strategy is a good one… to start. It gives BlackBerry and developers the ability to easily get apps into BlackBerry World that would not have been there otherwise. But it also comes with complications.

A developer noted in Reddit earlier this month that pirated Android apps are making their way to BlackBerry World through the port utility. Piracy, that eternal bane of the hardworking developer, could end up thriving in BlackBerry World. And that could discourage legitimate developers from writing BB 10 apps.

There is also the matter of quality. As pretty much everyone knows, many apps in both the Apple App Store and Google Play are basically garbage. A quick tour through BlackBerry World shows that much of that garbage has been ported from Android. Clones of popular apps have also come along for the ride. For instance, BlackBerry lists Fruit Ninja from Halfbrick Studios as a premium partner, but a search of BlackBerry World does not turn up the game. Instead you will find a variety of clones (“Killer Fruit,” Kiwi Slice” etc.). 

BlackBerry has done well to make sure many top apps are available at launch, including staples like Skype, Kindle, Angry Birds Star Wars, Twitter, Facebook and so on. But many go-to apps - including Netflix, Spotify, Hulu Plus, Pandora and others - are not.

Furthermore, it looks like apps from Twitter and Facebook were actually developed by BlackBerry as opposed to directly by their source companies. This is similar to what Microsoft did by creating its own Facebook and Twitter apps (Facebook by Microsoft) for Windows Phone 8. While the social apps are optimized to the operating system, not having Facebook and Twitter build directly for BlackBerry can make for a sub-optimal user experience.

Heins & Alicia Keys at BlackBerry 10 Launch Confusing The Message

BlackBerry desperately wants you to believe it has done a stupendous job with BlackBerry 10 and the first Z10 and Q10 smartphones. And for the most part it looks like a success in development. Nobody really expected BlackBerry to ever release anything worth a damn again, much less anything this good. 

Heins told the crowd on Wednesday that BlackBerry 10 is "true mobile computing." It is difficult to ascertain exactly what he means by that.

Is it the work/life balance of the BlackBerry system he refers? The hub of communication, entertainment and professional life? Yes, BlackBerry 10 boasts some great and unique features that differentiate itself from the iPhone, Android and Windows Phone but that does not necessarily make it revolutionary.

BlackBerry 10 wants to be everything to everybody. That makes it hard to read what its real strengths are. Add to that the name change from RIM to BlackBerry, the weird announcement of Alicia Keys as the company's “global creative director,” the litany of partnerships and the dual consumer/enterprise focus and it's hard to tell exactly what the message is supposed to be. BlackBerry does not have a clear positioning in the way that Steve Jobs outlined when he placed Apple at the “intersection of technology and liberal arts.”

“Simplification is all about getting closer to customers. BlackBerry needs to create a simpler customer experience for current and potential customers,” said Russ Meyer, global strategy director at Siegel+Gale. "But their messaging is muddled.”

Is BlackBerry’s Future Bright?

BlackBerry 10 will help keep or even bring back many of the company’s loyal customers, like the young developer sitting next to me at the launch event. Top developers will eventually come around and built (or port) for BlackBerry 10 and the app ecosystem will round out. BlackBerry can expect a modest degree of short-term success from its loyal user base and an uptick in enterprise clients. 

But, like BlackBerry’s message, the truth of the company’s prospects are difficult to ascertain. Certainly, the Z10 and Q10 were good starts to the year for BlackBerry, the most important year in the history of the company. Can it ride that momentum all the way back to respectability and relevance? 

In six months, we will have the answer.

As part of it's splashy launch of BlackBerry 10, the company announced Wednesday that it has 70,000 apps in its BlackBerry World app store today, along with 1,000 premium apps from top publishers. 

Many BlackBerry Apps Not Native

Not so fast. These apps are not all hat they seem. In fact, a great portion of them are actually ported Android apps.

“40% are wrapped Android applications,” Martyn Mallick, VP of global alliances and business development at BlackBerry said to reporters. 

For instance, the Skype app on BlackBerry 10 is actually a port from the Skype app for Android. Skype has built native apps for iOS, Android and Windows Phone (Skype is owned by Microsoft) but it was easier for Skype to port its existing Android app before building specifically for BlackBerry. 

Android To BlackBerry 10 Port-o-Thons

BlackBerry (formerly Research In Motion) is relying on the port strategy in the short term to help developers get their apps onto the BlackBerry 10 platform fast. It encourages developers to build straight for BlackBerry 10 and the features that the operating system holds, but for now at least, it will basically take an app any way it can get it.

“The only way I can compare it is that it is a soft quality strategy,” said BlackBerry VP of developer relations Alec Saunders to ReadWrite. “If you compare what we do to what Apple does," they make developers conform to all of these iOS guidelines or theywill boot you out of the store. "We are like, 'You know what? If you have a code base, we want if to run on the platform.' '”

Saunders said that BlackBerry will offer developers who build specifically for BlackBerry “tangible marketing benefits,” which will be announced at a BlackBerry Jam Europe conference in Amsterdam next week. The suggestion seems to be that ported apps will not receive the same type of visibility or marketing from BlackBerry in its app store. 

“When I say tangible marketing benefits, you are going to do better in our store [with a native BlackBerry app] than if you built for Android,” Saunders said. “The porting strategy is there but increasingly we are going to be pushing people to build for BlackBerry to have the native parts of the BlackBerry experience because we think that experience is better.”

Saunders and the developer outreach team started doing “port-o-thons” in January to get developers “over the hump” in pushing out BlackBerry 10 apps ahead of today’s launch. One such port-a-thon brought nearly 15,000 apps to BlackBerry 10, while another added several thousand more. About 38,000 of the 70,000 apps in the new BlackBerry World app store are ports. As part of the port-a-thons, BlackBerry built a utility that can easily turn Android Apps into BlackBerry apps. 

A Sound Short-Term Strategy

In the short term, the port strategy should work for BlackBerry. Developers maynotice that an app is actually an Android app and not a BlackBerry app, but most consumers won't know the difference. As long as it works, right?

As the presence of the ported Skype app shows, this strategy is a decent way for BlackBerry to quickly get top-tier apps to its nascent platform. And if BlackBerry 10 sales start taking off, developers who built directly for the platform could benefit better than they would on iOS or Android - which is a reasonable incentive to follow up quick ports with true, native BlackBerry 10 apps.

Image of BlackBerry z10 by Dan Rowinski.

BlackBerry is back. 

The company formerly known as Research In Motion Wednesday announced two new devices on its brand new BlackBerry 10 operating system at a keynote address in New York City.

With And Without Keyboards

The BlackBerry Z10 will be a full-touch 4.2-inch (1280 x 768 resolution) screen, dual-core 1.5 GHz device with an 8-megapixel back camera and a 2-megapixel front-facing camera. The Q10 has a physical keyboard with a  3.1-inch screen and similar internal components as its full-touch sibling, but has a 720 x 720 resolution screen.

Canada and the United Kingdom will be able to purchase the devices through carriers by the end of this week. The United States will get the Z10 (known as the Zed 10) by mid-March - priced at $199 on a two-year contract. The Q10 will be available in the U.S. by the middle of April, BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins said.

Prices and availability will vary across the world as BlackBerry has said that its carrier partners will determine when and for how much they will sell the devices. 

"The testing process in the U.S. with all of those carriers is a lengthy one," Heins said. "Right now we are in discussion and really strong collaborative work with all of these partners."

Lots Of Apps, But Some Big Omissions

BlackBerry 10 will launch with 70,000 apps in its renamed app store - BlackBerry World - including 1,000 apps for top publishers including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Kindle Reader, WhatsApp and more. But plenty of staple apps are missing, including Spotify, Netflix, Hulu Plus, Evernote and more. 

"Some of the apps I rely on are missing. No TripIt. No Evernote. No Flipboard. No Expensify. No Words With Friends. And more troubling, I found one app that appeared to be a Chinee counterfeit and seems now to have been so," wrote Forrester analyst Ted Schadler.

At the keynote for BlackBerry 10 today in New York City, Research In Motion CEO Thorsten Heins said that RIM is no more. 

"From today on, we are BlackBerry everywhere in the world," Heins said.

Heins said that Research In Motion is BlackBerry. All employees are working on BlackBerry and the brand is indentifiable only with BlackBerry. Hence, RIM, a company that has been in existence since the early 1980s, is no more. 

The company will now trade publicly as BBRY.

Stay tuned for more information from the BlackBerry 10 launch event in New York City.