This is a guest post by Catherine Jones. If you wish to write one, kindly check out the guidelines to write a guest post.
Research In Motion, the makers of Blackberry smartphones and the Playbook tablets have announced that they will be introducing upgraded and enhanced operating software for its range of smartphones and Tablets. This will enable it to take on Apple and Google who have overtaken the in the smartphone market once ruled by RIM.
The Canada based company, announced the new software at its developers conference in San Francisco but did not provide any timeframe for the new version.
The BBX software would replace the obsolete software that currently runs BlackBerry with a bundle built around the QNX system, already the engine behind the PlayBook. RIM wants to recapture the market that has been overrun by Apple and Google devices.
The new BBX platform would not support Java on which previous blackberry software was based.
The company is moving to open Web standards and this is a major move in that direction. The focus is to entice developers to build apps for the devices and tablets and increase the application count and features available. RIM lacks far behind its competition in the apps arena.
The company also announced a tool for developers to port their Android applications to Playbook. This will ensure that more apps become available and increase penetration and popularity. The Playbook tablet has been a slow mover in the market and dearth of applications is often cited as the reason for the failure.
The company did not address the major drawback with the Playbook tablets at present. It was silent of when the tablet will be handle email that is routed through its secure servers without being linked to a blackberry device.
The developers conference comes in the shadow of the major outage experienced last week by Blackberry users worldwide. The company has already announced USD 100 premium apps to be given free as a compensation for the service outage.
The company hopes to address its slide with the new announcements but it will take concrete steps and sales on the ground to convince the skeptics.
RIM needs devices that sell and devices sells based on usability, hardware and software. Developer’s needs devices and numbers to make apps that sell. So it is all a chicken and egg story that RIM needs to configure out before time runs out.
About the Author: Catherine Jones writes for http://www.markmitsuglendale.com. She enjoys content and writing about the social sphere.