Wirelessnorth.ca

So listen, Research In Motion is kindof a big deal. RIM is by far the single greatest success story in Candian tech since Nortel. There’s a lot of good people, a lot of smart people, a lot of friends at RIM. We all just got to believe.

WirelessNorth.ca Top 10 inarguable reasons to still believe in RIM

1. Cash! Despite all this gloom, RIM is still turning in fat profits. Profits! Almost 700M this quarter. So ok that’s on declining units, share, margin in a growth industry, but the business is still banking cash. With a hoard of cash in the bank, RIM can afford to ride out several quarters while they complete a much-needed product transition.
2. It’s not like market, analyst, media expectations of RIM can sink much lower. It can only be up from here right?
3. The competition is slipping too. Both Apple (for reasons unknown) and Google (for being distracted with tablets) have slowed down their cadence of new releases. The iPhone5 has slipped to at least fall. This gives RIM a rare window for their catch up products to be at relative hardware parity… before the next round of dual core, big screen and even makes-you-breakfast-in-the-morning features out-pace them once again.
4. Actually iOS is almost 5 years old and starting to show it (um, multitasking anyone?), and Android is just a little younger (and stole much of it’s design cues from Apple). Sure RIM are starting essentially version 1.0 of a new mobile OS with QNX, but this is RIMs chance to rethink and genuinely leapfrog Apple and Android with a more modern platform. Remember that RIM’s current boat anchor of an OS was itself once the epitome of a slick, advanced (roughly 5-year) old OS before the iPhone first landed and changed the whole landscape in ways RIM’s mature products and ecosystem was ill-equipped to compete with.
5. Some people still really love blackberries. For real, like real people! We’ve overheard business types actually fighting IT depts. to get a blackberry rather than another smartphone. For people who really care about communication, email and calendar, the blackberry has a legit keyboard (unlike iPhone) and a batterylife longer than a baby’s fart (see Android). Blackberries are still very good at what they’re good at: being productive.
6. Remember the last time a once-legendary device maker temporarily retarded and kindof forgot to innovate for half a decade? Well, they realized the error of their ways and stormed back at the last moment with a highly innovated and widely lauded new platform. Oh – wait – that was Palm.
7. It’s only been 4 years since the iPhone, there’s probably tons of people in the world that don’t realize yet that easy touch scrolling and pinch zooming is a really really nice feature to have for web browsing, maps or thousands of other apps vs the pathologically horrid pointy/clicky experiences blackberry curve offers today. Who cares if touch screens aren’t even a standard feature on all RIM’s new phones in 2011?
8. Don’t worry about these announcement of “layoffs”. It’s bollocks, A little bird told me that since at RIMs bonus are paid out in June, so a lot of the smart talent was about to quit anyway.
9. Please disregard reading the previous three items. In fact stop panicking, put away the prayer matt, the horsehair shirts, stop trashing that poor stock like it’s a western coastal city after a hockey game everything’s going to be just fine because…
10. What’s the top reason there’s hope for the great Canadian home team Research in Motion? At least the bastards haven’t (yet) sold out the entire line to Windows Mobile 7

^{Disclosure: your editor presently holds no equities long or short in RIM}

The good news: You can touch the screen! And there’s apparently a browser that works, and something to do with a new media player. We’re expecting to see new hardware to go with it this June/July.

The bad: If you watch the promo vid it on mute you might be mistaken for thinking the new OS gives you a bad case of the Parkinsons.

Or is that the writing on the wall. RIM has an OS platform that drastically needs to modernize. From a towering duct-taped-up collection Java apps perched on a collection of a radio stacks, to a bulletproof embedded OS kernel. We think this bodes well. Go RIM.

From Alec Saunders:

News is out this morning that Harman International has agreed to sell it’s QNX Software Systems division to Research In Motion. TechCrunch speculates that this might mean tighter integration with automobiles, since Harman acquired QNX in order to provide software to its automotive customer base. RIM Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis himself hypes up the automotive possibilities in the release.

I’m not buying it.

For those who don’t know QNX, it’s a micro-kernel based operating system with a sophisticated graphical user interface, a modern POSIX-based tool-chain, and a fully distributable architecture. In layman’s terms, that means it’s more stable than LINUX, runs in less memory than any of LINUX, OS X, or Windows – even the embedded versions, pretty to look at for users, and easy to develop software for using skills that are relatively common in the industry. Oh, and did I mention that it sports a touch screen UI, and a fully integrated flash development environment?

And if some useful automotive applications come along for the ride, we guess that’s fine too.

LINK: RIM bought QNX because of Apple

Here’s an interesting experiment for blackberry fans, try using any other modern smartphone for a few weeks then switch back to your (aka non-storm) blackberry. Befuddle yourself in amusement as you jab futilely at big fat OK buttons on the screen, get confused as you try and quickly pinch-zoom or flick your tumb over the screen to speedily scroll down a webpage. It doesn’t work. Which, once you are used to them, it feels crazy because natural gestures are just such a great and easier way to handle many common mobile iteractions from launching an app to using the web. Sure, after an iphone or any slide-out keyboard, the famed berry bold/curve keyboard is a joy when hammering out emails, but for everything else the device feels like a relic. Like last-decade’s keyboard and mouse interaction paradigm crammed into a form factor it doesn’t belong.

We’re on your side here RIM, at wirelessnorth we like to cheer for the home team. But c’mon now. Would it kill you to let us grab hold of the screen once in a while?

1. It’s slick, the interface is nice and shiny
2. There’s a good broad selection of apps
3. Damn the apps are kind of expensive ($14.99 for that game with 2 out of 5 stars?, $29 for the weather channel?? do they know I could just google the weather for free?)
4. Where are the trial versions? Did blackberry get the memo that most of the most successful iphone apps have a freeware or try before you buy version?
5. Godamn it’s slow if you are on EDGE
6. This old curve can’t actually install any apps because it’s memory is “full”
7. Basically, you curve is not really a smartphone any more
8. The app store is really for the Bold

So RIMs iphone killer is landing at Telus. Or rather, safer to say for now, Telus’ Instinct-killer. Almost certainly, the storm will be more appealing than Bells touchscreen pony the Samsung Instinct.

It feels like there’s a whole cottage industry now amongst the handset makers in giving the desperate CDMA carriers to market against the iPhone. RIM’s core market is North America (the last bastion of CDMA) and it’s not the first time they’ve done something special for that standard. For a while the only 3G blackberries were on Bell/Telus’s EVDO network.

As for iPhone-killing, comparable specs are one thing, but RIM’s storm has a long way to go to match the feverish zeitgeist of the iPhone, not to mention iTunes integration, the app developer base etc. Of course we wish the Waterlooers the best of luck.

Along that line, more news/rumor from RIM is that they will also be launching an app store. The bad news is, that rather than be centrally hosted, the app store is unique to each carrier. We don’t know the full details yet, but that doesn’t sound good for developers. Rather than Apple’s slow and inscrutable app approval process, you can now look forward to something of the same with every carrier. What joy. Now little Johnny, don’t go building any app that might disrupt a Carrier business model, whether that model be present, future or imaginary…

As Alec puts it:

The appeal of the AppStore is that it goes around the carrier. As a developer, the last thing I want is to go on bended knee to 180 carriers to ask them to carry my software. Been there, done that, got the rugburn.

We shall see how Telus handles it. In the meantime, good for Telus and RIM for bringing us more fun toys to play with and a little more competition. Feel free to send one or two by the WirelessNorth.ca headquarters for closer inspection…

The storm should be out in time for Christmas (that doesn’t sound soon), we have no idea on the pricing contracts. Sometimes Christmas is a time Telus likes to throw the other carriers a curve ball when it comes to special plans and pricing. Ask Santa for that.

UPDATE: Looks like Bell is getting the storm too, so no competitive scoop for Telus. Maybe Telus and the newly privatized Bell should just merge and get it over with?…

So what’s your take on the new blackberry flip phone? Last we saw the beastie, we worried it was downright fugly but the release version (on T-mobile, no doubt Rogers soon). Early reviews are fairly positive, it’s got two big screens and better keyboard/ball, wifi and a better browser etc. And it is supposed to be pretty cheap. Nonetheless there’s one glaring flaw: no 3G.

It’s 2008 RIM what’s the deal? We can theorize a few reasons, some better than the others. Form factor: they needed 2G to keep it thin and light. Battery life: RIM is famous for not including advanced features until they could do it without sacrificing day-long battery life. Cost: shaving 3G cuts the materials bill by a few dollars (think single digits, but it counts). Ignorance: EDGE and classic speed push email is pretty good to start with, as first-time smartphone users won’t know what they’re missing. Wifi is good enough: really? Market segmentation: if the low-end kickstart could do everything, why would anyone step up to the premium models? Timing: the 3G/EVDO version is coming next year.

Overall, it’s got enough under the hood that we think this launch will still do well for Canada’s home-team cellphone maker. But what’s your intuition? Are there really hoards of would-be smart phone users braying to lay their clammy hands on a flip phone factor? Is this the kickstart RIM needs to beat out the $199 iphone in the low end of the market? Or is this flipper-baby missing some too-important bits in your mind?

Less than encouraging signs these week from “Canada’s national cell phone” as RIM’s latest Bold launch is looking sadly timid. All signs point to RIM struggling with early manufacturing/delivery woes with the device, a not uncommon problem. Your guess is as good as ours as to which particular component or supplier might be at fault. Mark McQueen has the perspective from the heart of Toronto’s Bay street.

…One journalist observed that it wasn’t anywhere near as exciting as the iPhone launch. The truth is, BlackBerry customers aren’t lining up to buy them ’cause they aren’t in stock yet.

It looks like our August 12th scoop that the Bold will be “available in a couple” of weeks will pan out to be accurate in the end. Can you imagine Apple launching the iPod without product in stock? What a PR disaster that would’ve been…

The form factor feels very solid, much more so than the 8700. The screen is a bit shorter than one might expect, but the keyboard feels like bubblewrap when you tap a key. Not quite the squishy 8800 keys, but not really any better, either.

The fellow next to me and I agreed that it just didn’t feel right. Maybe it was this particular demo, and a real “suitable for ownership” model would feel more sure-footed. But I doubt it.

To get tens of thousands of white collar workers in Toronto, Boston, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and elsewhere to prematurely upgrade for several hundred dollars down, plus a 3 year plan extention, will likely take more than this hardware offering, I’m sad to say. It looks good, but doesn’t drive quite as well. At least based upon a quick “drive by”.

The sophisticated testing labs at WirelessNorth.ca stand ready for either RIM or Rogers to send us over a unit for our own thorough evaluation.

LINK: I [don’t] want my Bold on The Wellington Financial Blog

The sleek must-have wonderphone of just 18 months ago is now going cheap on ebay. Poor pearl we hardly knew ye. This year the little RIM that could has been overshadowed by the curve with it’s proper keyboard and of course by a certain apple device. As a result a fair number of used and second hand unlocked pearls you can find on ebay for only $100-$120. That’s a pretty great price for an unlocked smartphone with full bberry push email goodness. And it fits nice in your pocket.

Anyone out there still kicking around with say an old crufty old handset, it’s a cheap and cheerful way to get into the smart phone game.

Thanks to Michele for the tip.

further tips: second gen pearl’s (8120 vs 8100 is the gsm one) is a little better but also more scarce.

Jevon has been following this one for a week or two and has all the news over at StartupNorth.ca New $150 million Blackberry Fund, based in Canada.

These are exciting times for mobile developers in canda. Between this fund, other VC and Angels in the mobile space, and a number of Federal and Provincial funds/programs out there, there is a lot of backing available for mobile developers.

What do you want to build? or what’s the killer blackberry app you’ve been waiting for?