RIM’s software roadmap has been leaked and it details what apps RIM will be focusing on for the rest of the year. It looks like RIM’s big priorities this year are:
BlackBerry OS 7
BIS 4.0/4.1
BlackBerry Protect
BlackBerry ID
App World 2.1 and App World for PlayBook
BlackBerry News 1.1
TicketMaster 2.0
Facebook
Social Feeds
Twitter
There isn’t any news about OS 7 just yet and it’s not clear whether it will be the QNX OS or another update to their legacy operating system. One thing we do know, is that RIM is focusing its attention on social networking and fostering more sharing of content and communication. While it’s cool to see RIM developing apps that make the BlackBerry experience better, you have to wonder why the third party developer market can’t do it for them. If RIM worked harder on making the platform value proposition better for developers, they wouldn’t have to develop the software in-house.
Hit the jump to check out the upcoming features for RIM’s first party apps.
BlackBerry News
Strategic product objectives:
- Premier news reader app providing instant, always-on connectivity to the latest information
- Simplify the subscription based information and facilitate cross-user collaboration to create a rich, engaging experience
- Provide a regionalized BlackBerry experience allowing carriers to customize default content for subscribers.
- Create an incentive point for BBID sign-ups
- Collect consumer information to power the VAS portfolio and marketing activities.
Feature Overview
v 1.0
- Deliver published news content on BB
- Simple and easy navigation to discover new content feeds (by manually searching hrough a l library and or performing searches by keyword or URL)
- Recommendation feature that suggests new/related channels/feeds based on subscriptions and readership of other users
V1.1
- Integration with social feeds
- Preload on HH6.1Ad support
- Weather
- Sports
- Push notifications
Value Prop & Positioning
For the Consumer: (1) Simple, easy to use news reader that notifies and delivers updated content from their favorite sites (2) Social sharing of content (via BBM, email, SMS) creates a viral and sticky experience driven guessers to their device
For carriers: (1) Provides a highly customized and regionalized out-of-the-box experience for this subscribers (2) Adds value to the careers by driving more traffic to their existing content relationships
For RIM: (1) Collect consumer information fto build a better understanding of BlackBerry users (2) Build additional value for driving BBID sign-ups (3) Drive revenue channel by delivering relevant and contextual content to add value to the VAS portfolio
Social Feeds
Feature Overview
v1.0 – Replicate BlackBerry Message list model
V2.0 – Extension of the BlackBerry Social Inbox
- Additional content and Favorites view
- Support for notification on specific views, notifying users when people/content is posted that they are specifically interested in
- Read/Unread status indicators
- Community specific functionality thorugh Timeline (eg comment, ReTweet)
- BB News integration for RSS content
Ticketmaster 2.0
Product Overview:
Ultimate mobile Ticketmaster experience exclusive to BlackBerry. Users can: view events, securely purchase tickets and add events to BlackBerry calendar.
Feature Overview:
- Push notifications of upcoming ‘Favorite’ events – users are able to receive notifications of new event sin real time
- Allows users to purchase tickets from their device
- Add events to calendar
- Set Favorite artists and events
- Leverages geofunctions to connect users to events in their area
