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BlackBerry announced the all-touch Motion three months ago for a number of countries around the world, but today at CES it's finally giving the phone a proper US launch. Starting January 12th, you'll be able to order the Snapdragon 625-powered Motion from Amazon or Best Buy here in America for $449.Featuring IP67 ruggedization, Android 7.1 (Oreo will come in Q2, says BlackBerry), a 5.5" 1080p display, and a 4000mAh battery, the Motion is set to do battle most obviously with Motorola's Z2 Play here in the States. The phone runs a pretty lightly skinned version of Android 7.1 with a good handful of BlackBerry software tweaks, many of which BlackBerry says will be trickling down to the KeyOne.
Since BlackBerry got out of the hardware game, and TCL started building phones for the company previously known for its physical keyboard-toting business phones, we've seen a couple of new BlackBerry-branded devices. There was the modest Aurora (sans keyboard), specifically for the Indonesian market, and then there was the flagship KEYone, which was supposed to invoke memories of BlackBerry roots with its physical keyboard. It did so, to some extent, even if it was underwhelming in certain areas.
On July 7th, the domains AndroidSecured.com and AndroidSecured.net were registered to BlackBerry Limited, the firm formerly known as Research In Motion (RIM) that presides over the one-time dominant smartphone platform. Below is a screenshot of one of the registration records with the area of interest highlighted.
This morning we were alerted to a possible Blackberry Messenger sighting in the Play Store, but upon closer inspection, it was immediately obvious that this app is beyond fake. The problem is it already has 100,000+ installs, it's been sitting in the Play Store since Friday, and Google hasn't done anything to remove the listing yet.
Samsung The King Of Android With 45.4% Of All Global Shipments In Q1 2012
Samsung The King Of Android With 45.4% Of Shipments in Q1 2012
IDC's report for the first quarter of 2012 indicates that Google's Android continues to grow its market share to 59%, while Apple's iOS lags in second at 23%. Unsurprisingly Samsung has given the biggest boost to Android, accounting for a whopping 45.4% of all Android smartphone shipments worldwide.
Oh, RIM. You're hemorrhaging customers, executives, and share value. It's painfully obvious you're on track for a disaster of Palm-proportions. And still, your upper-level management fling zingers at the competition that would make anyone but the die-hardest of BlackBerry fans skip the facepalm and go straight to a facedesk. It's almost like watching a Shakespearean tragedy unfold.
RIM, in the official BlackBerry developer's blog, announced today that Blackberry Playbook's OS update to version 2.0 will bring compatibility with Android applications. RIM's post has several helpful tips for developers looking to bring their creations to the Playbook, offering some recommendations for ensuring your approval into BlackBerry App World:
Let's be frank: RIM's BlackBerry products are unilaterally, shall we say, unexciting. And RIM's new theme song should probably be this. And by "unexciting," I mean ugly, hopelessly dated, and so boring that a story about them spontaneously bursting into flames might actually give the company some much-needed edginess in their marketing campaigns. Maybe that's a bridge too far.
Now, we're an Android blog and all, but we aren't exactly deaf to the seemingly never-ending corporate death-curdle that is Research in Motion. As we speak, the tech world is watching (halfway out of actual interest, half for sheer entertainment value) as the once seemingly immovable enterprise titan rolls, like a god on high fallen from Olympus, to the bottom of a mountain called Relevancy.
Update: This was just an unsubstantiated rumor according to a Samsung spokesman: "We haven't considered acquiring the firm and are not interested in (buying RIM)" - Reuters.
When the tech world first heard of the BlackBerry tablet, it was greeted with a fair amount of optimism. It was thought that the very daring (for RIM) device could be just what the company needed to get out of its unabashed slump in popularity, particularly in the United States. In addition, rumblings that the device would be able to run Android Market apps (and actually can now) had Android and RIM fans alike excited for the possibilities of cross-platform development.
If you head over to FOSSPatents this morning, you'll find a rather lengthy article about Google's acquisition of Motorola that ends with the following conclusion:
A recent report from ComScore indicates that as of July 2011 82 million Americans own smartphones, with Android running on 41.8% of those devices, iOS on 27%, BlackBerry OS on 21.7%, Windows Phone on 5.7%, and Symbian on 1.9%.
Samsung has taken a dramatic step today towards world domination and the death of SMS by announcing an intriguing mobile cross-platform instant messaging service called ChatON. Similar to RIM's BlackBerry Messenger and Apple's iMessage, ChatON will be Samsung's foray into the global mobile communications service connecting all major smartphones and feature phone platforms. There will even be a web client to facilitate conversations between mobile devices and PCs. Furthermore, according to the press release, ChatON will allow users to share text, images, hand-written notes and videos. Feature phones will have a basic app that will enable users to share text, pictures, calendar, contacts, and emotions. In contrast, smartphone users will have advanced features including the ability to view how often buddies communicate with each other and the ability to post comments on their friends' profiles. Users with the smartphone app can also create animated messages with handwritten notes and audio files.
In case you thought Android's extremely fast-paced growth was being exaggerated, comScore's latest report on mobile market share might just convince you otherwise: From December 2010 to March 2011, Android not only kept its first place position among mobile platforms in the US, but it shot up 6 percentage points - far greater than all other platforms.
It's no secret that RIM (Research In Motion) has been dipping their figurative toes in the Android water lately, and it looks like running Android apps on the Blackberry Playbook was just the beginning. RIM plans to bring Blackberry Enterprise Solution to both Android and iOS, further helping businesses manage their wireless infrastructure and security.
NielsenWire has released yet another one of their bar and pie chart-filled smartphone surveys for the US this morning, and it's just more good news for Android. Here's a quick breakdown of some of the key stats Nielsen compiled:
Some combinations are as natural as peanut butter and jelly - Avatar & 3D, Apple & dictatorship, and Conan O'Brien & late-night comedy, to name a few. But are Android apps and the BlackBerry PlayBook also such a sweet match? If you ask RIM, the answer is a firm, definitive "yes."