Most people are surprised that Blackberry maker Research in Motion has been successful in its attempts to woo mobile app developers. In fact, the Ontario-based smartphone manufacturer did a good job getting the “nod” from mobile app developers to create enterprise-oriented apps for Blackberry 10. Blackberry’s latest operating system or OS was launched along with 70,000 apps at Blackberry World earlier this year. .
For most telecom experts, the Blackberry 10 and its new Z10 and Q10 handset models are part of RIM’s “last ditch effort” to reclaim its relevance and previously held position as the corporate community’s number one business phone. RIM also decided to abandon its 25-year-old company name and label itself after its flagship smartphone product, Blackberry.
So far, Blackberry 10 has been getting lots of positive reviews since its official worldwide launch in January. However, some tech gadget enthusiasts say that no matter how good or great the Blackberry 10 is, it will be useless without the bountiful selection of apps on Blackberry World. And it’s not just about quantity—70,000 apps, for example.
Because let’s face it: mobile apps have forever changed the way we do things, including business transactions. With hundreds of thousands of applications available in the market, these applications have “incorporated” almost every aspect of our personal and business lives.
The condition of the Blackberry 10 mobile application, at least, is no different from the “apnea” experienced by its predecessor. This may disappoint Blackberry loyalists, but to be honest, Blackberry 10 needs popular apps that people, especially the business elite, actually use and care about. But it doesn’t have it.
With the exception of the mobile game app Angry Birds, apps like Skype, Amazon Kindle, and What is it haven’t used a Blackberry 10 yet. And to push your disappointment even further, there’s no actual word on when this will actually launch.
Now your disappointment is bound to hit rock bottom: just like a popular app Instagrambarked, Spotify, Pandora and even Gmail or Evernote are not yet available for handsets running Blackberry 10; and we also cannot guarantee that this will be present in the latest Blackberry OS.
Then what can you find on Blackberry World besides trash? There’s Apollo, Tiny Bird, and PicStory—naked copies of popular apps available for other operating systems. The star of the world of apps like Facebook, Dropbox, Google Talk, and Yahoo Messenger weren’t even made for the Blackberry 10 by the original company; rather it is made by Blackberry.
With the way things are going, this innovation may be “too little, too late” to save the company that is hanging by only a thread in the global smartphone market. It can be recalled that most investors were skeptical about the Blackberry 10, and the first smartphone model to run on the latest OS, after the smartphone and OS market shares fell to a dire 4.6% and 1.1% last year, according to International Data Corporation and Kantar. Worldpanel ComTech. Blackberry also slipped into third place in terms of preference among employees of 1,100 global companies, according to the iPass survey.
On the other hand, Blackberry remains one of the company’s top boardroom choices for business smartphones. And for those who can’t afford a current iPhone or one that’s sleek and sophisticated enough for an Android phone, we say the Blackberry can still sync with the phone service of your Verizon or AT&T telco or business and cellular VoIP providers like RingCentral and REVE Systems.
