{"id":38933,"date":"2011-12-03T12:15:43","date_gmt":"2011-12-03T10:15:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=38933"},"modified":"2011-12-03T12:22:25","modified_gmt":"2011-12-03T10:22:25","slug":"what-blackberry-has-to-fix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/38933-what-blackberry-has-to-fix.html","title":{"rendered":"What BlackBerry has to fix"},"content":{"rendered":"

BlackBerry<\/a> is soaring ahead in Africa, the Middle East and Europe. In July, it disclosed that it had added\u00a01m new subscribers across<\/a>\u00a0this region in less than three weeks. This is huge.<\/p>\n

Balance that out with a net decline in subscribers in its mature North American markets, however, and the outlook isn\u2019t fantastic.<\/p>\n

Basically, it needs to keep adding more (net) subscribers in emerging markets than ones it\u2019s losing. So far, it\u2019s keeping pace. But the\u00a0company and platform<\/a>\u00a0are undergoing a fundamental transition.<\/p>\n

Right now, there are three things RIM<\/a> needs to get right to ensure BlackBerry remains relevant.<\/p>\n

1. Eco-system, apps and services<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is one area where a cheque book makes a difference (just ask Microsoft<\/a>). RIM\u2019s made all the right moves here with all the important apps covered (Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, etc).<\/p>\n

There\u2019s some innovative stuff (social apps that leverage BBM<\/a>), but not enough. And there\u2019s no buzz about apps in BlackBerry App World (in many categories it\u2019s a near ghost town). Right now, it can win on localised, relevant apps (and it has made a start).<\/p>\n

BlackBerry can also win by growing its catalogue (open that cheque book again). Beyond this, it is courting developers in the hope they will either develop natively for the new BBX operating system, port their apps to BlackBerry, or compile their Android<\/a> apps for BlackBerry.<\/p>\n

The developer relations execs and staff are making all the right noises. But RIM has to prove to developers there\u2019s a reason to build for this platform. Or at least for BBX (and completely ignore the existing installed base for the next 12 months).<\/p>\n

2. Browser<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is the most obvious criticism BlackBerry users have of their devices. The on-board browser doesn\u2019t handle the \u201cnormal\u201d web that well at all. It hardly handles multimedia.<\/p>\n

Now RIM is wholly focused on compression (and it\u2019s a great selling point to operators who are trying to manage congested networks), but there\u2019s lots more heavy-lifting on rendering and compression that can be done in the cloud.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s already doing some of it, why not more? Fix the browser. Or buy a browser that\u2019s better and integrate that.<\/p>\n

3. BBX<\/strong>
\nThe new version of BlackBerry\u2019s operating system (BBX) was\u00a0announced at DevCon 2011<\/a>\u00a0in October. It\u2019s a major leap forward and makes BlackBerry 7 (or 6) look dated. But, it needs speed.<\/p>\n

BBX brings together QNX (the foundation of what RIM used for the PlayBook) with the security and core of the BlackBerry OS. Obviously combining the two isn\u2019t a simple task.<\/p>\n

RIM isn\u2019t saying when BBX will launch and ship, neither is there a native developer kit available (or even an indication of when it will be out). BlackBerry needs to get BBX right. It needs to get it to market as soon as it can.<\/p>\n

Every quarter that slips means it\u2019s going to be that much tougher to remain relevant. Or else, it faces a few years of \u201csunsetting\u201d (think Palm in the early 2000s).<\/p>\n

Yes, I haven\u2019t mentioned the PlayBook.<\/p>\n

Right now, RIM management need fewer distractions, not more. The jury is out on whether this device will gain any traction in either the enterprise or consumer spaces.<\/p>\n

By all means continue with development and release a PlayBook 2 (and that updated operating system everyone\u2019s waiting for), but don\u2019t do it at the expense of these three issues facing your core business.<\/p>\n

Source: Moneyweb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three things BlackBerry has to fix to stay in the game; Emerging markets are key<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":33738,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[101,5846,97,35],"class_list":["post-38933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cellular","tag-bbm","tag-bbx","tag-blackberry","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38933"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/75"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38933"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39275,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38933\/revisions\/39275"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}