Toronto: The maker of the BlackBerry
smartphone is promising a speedier device, a superb typing experience
and the ability to keep work and personal identities separate on the
same phone. It's the fruit of a crucial, long-overdue makeover for the
Canadian company.
Thorsten Heins, chief executive of Research In Motion Ltd., will
show off the first phone with the new BlackBerry 10 system in New York
on Wednesday. A marketing campaign that includes a Super Bowl ad will
accompany the long-anticipated debut. Repeated delays have left the
once-pioneering BlackBerry an afterthought in the shadow of Apple's
trend-setting iPhone and Google's Android-driven devices.
Now, there's some optimism. Previews of the software have gotten
favourable reviews on blogs. Financial analysts are starting to see some
slight room for a comeback. RIM's stock has nearly tripled to $16.18
from a nine-year low in September, though it's still nearly 90 percent
below its 2008 peak of $147.
Most analysts consider a BlackBerry 10 success to be crucial for the company's long-term viability.
"The old models are becoming obsolete quickly," BGC Financial
analyst Colin Gillis said. "There is still a big user base but it's
going to rotate off. The question is: Where do they rotate to?"
The BlackBerry, pioneered in 1999, has been the dominant
smartphone for on-the-go business people. Corporate
information-technology managers like the phones because they're
relatively secure and easy to manage. Many employees loved them because
of physical keyboards that were easier to type on than the touch-screen
iPhone.
President Barack Obama couldn't bear to part with it when he took
office. Oprah Winfrey declared it one of her "favorite things." People
got so addicted that the device was nicknamed "the CrackBerry."
The BlackBerry began to cross over to consumers. But when the
iPhone came out in 2007, it showed that phones can do much more than
email and phone calls. They can play games, music and movies. Android
came along to offer even more choices. Though IT managers still love
BlackBerrys, employees were bringing their own devices to the workplace -
a trend Heins acknowledged RIM was slow to adapt to.
Suddenly, the BlackBerry looked ancient.
Even as BlackBerry sales continued to grow in many parts of the
world, many BlackBerry users in North America switched to iPhones and
Android devices. BlackBerry's worldwide subscriber based peaked at 80
million in the quarter that ended Sept. 1, before dropping to 79 million
in the most-recent quarter. In the US, according to research firm IDC,
shipments of BlackBerry phones plummeted from 46 per cent of the market
in 2008 to 2 per cent in 2012. Most phones in use today are either
iPhones or Android devices.
RIM promised a new system to catch up, using technology it got
through its 2010 purchase of QNX Software Systems. RIM initially said
BlackBerry 10 would come by early 2012, but then the company changed
that to late 2012. A few months later, that date was pushed further, to
early 2013, missing the lucrative holiday season. The holdup helped wipe
out more than $70 billion in shareholder wealth and 5,000 jobs.
Although executives have been providing a glimpse at some of
BlackBerry 10's new features for months, Heins will finally showcase a
complete system at Wednesday's event. Devices will go on sale soon after
that. The exact date and prices are expected Wednesday.
RIM redesigned the system to embrace the multimedia, apps and touch-screen experience prevalent today.
"Historically there have been areas that have not been our
strongest points," Rick Costanzo, RIM's executive vice president of
global sales, said in an interview. "Not only have we caught up, but we
may even be better than some of the competition now."
Costanzo said "no one else can touch" what RIM's new system offers.
The new operating system promises better multitasking than either
the iPhone or Android. Simply swipe a finger across the phone's display
screen to switch to another program.
All emails and notifications from such applications as Twitter
and Facebook go to the BlackBerry Hub, a nerve center accessible with a
finger swipe even if you have another application open. One can peek
into it and open an email, or return to the previous application without
opening the email.
"You are not going in and out of applications; you're flowing
through applications with one simple gesture of your finger," Costanzo
said. "You can leave applications running. You can effortlessly flow
between them. So that's completely unique to us."
That said, multitasking will still be limited. If you're watching
a video, it will still run while you check for email. But it will pause
if you decide to open an email and resume when you are done.
The BlackBerry's touch-screen keyboard promises to learn a user's
writing style and suggest words and phrases to complete, going beyond
typo corrections offered by rivals. See the one you want, and flick it
up to the message area. Costanzo said that "BlackBerry offers the best
keyboard, period."
Gus Papageorgiou, a Scotiabank financial analyst who has tried it
out, agreed with that assessment and said the keyboard even learns and
adjusts to your thumb placements.
The first BlackBerry 10 phone will have only a touch screen. RIM
has said it will release a version with a physical keyboard soon after
that. That's an area RIM has excelled at, and it's one reason many
BlackBerry users have remained loyal despite temptations to switch.
Another distinguishing feature will be the BlackBerry Balance,
which allows two personas on the same device. Businesses can keep their
data secure without forcing employees to get a second device for
personal use. For instance, IT managers can prevent personal apps from
running inside corporate firewalls, but those managers won't have access
to personal data on the device.
With Balance, "you can just switch from work to personal mode,"
Papageorgiou said. "I think that is something that will attract a lot of
people."
RIM is also claiming that the BlackBerry 10's browser will be
speedy, even faster than browsers for laptop and desktop computers.
According to Papageorgiou, early, independent tests between the
BlackBerry 10 and the iPhone support that claim.
Regardless of BlackBerry 10's advances, though, the new system
will face a key shortcoming: It won't have as many apps written by
outside companies and individuals as the iPhone and Android. RIM has
said it plans to launch BlackBerry 10 with more than 70,000 apps,
including those developed for RIM's PlayBook tablet, first released in
2011.
Even so, that's just a tenth of what the iPhone and Android
offer. Papageorgiou said the initial group will include the most popular
ones such as Twitter and Facebook. But RIM will have to persuade others
to make a BlackBerry version, when they are already struggling to keep
up with both the iPhone and Android.
Like many analysts, Papageorgiou recently upgraded RIM's stock,
but cautioned that longtime BlackBerry users will have to get used to a
whole new operating system.
He said RIM can be successful if about a third of current
subscribers upgrade and if the company can get 4 million new users
overseas, especially in countries where the BlackBerry has remained
popular. IDC said smartphone shipments grew 44 per cent in 2012. If
those trends continue, it will be possible for the BlackBerry to grow
even if iPhone and Android users don't switch.
"This doesn't have to be the best smartphone on the planet to be a
success for RIM," he said. "I think the big question though is, if it
fails, is it just too late? Are the other two ecosystems just so
advanced that no one can catch up? That's a big risk."
