It’s especially painful when you read an anti-RIM article on the CBC versus other sites. It’s not that the CBC has to blindly defend every Canadian company, but they could at least have some honest, independent journalism rather than jumping on the anti-RIM bandwagon.
A recent article highlighting RIM’s absence from CES 2013 is a great example of this problem. It doesn’t make any sense for RIM to be at CES 2013 from a BlackBerry 10 perspective, yet the CBC is taking this as some sort of negative for the company, or making it indicative of a larger problem. All the while, the CBC is completely neglecting to mention the presence of QNX at the show.
Click here for the QNX car of the future video
Here are some of the more frustrating quotes:
“Microsoft and RIM are virtually invisible this year. Meanwhile, Google and Apple — two other tech giants who also aren’t officially exhibiting — are everywhere.”
Connected devices are about subscriber numbers, of which RIM and Windows Phone don’t have. Of course it doesn’t make sense to make a SmartTV or a dishwasher on BlackBerry 10. That would be absurd at this point. But why don’t you balance the article a little with mentioning that QNX is a RIM subsidiary and it’s already embedded in millions of devices? If you’re talking connected devices, this would be an obvious point to mention.
RIM is actually making an impressive show at CES 2013 with QNX. The company today announced that Delphi Automotive has chosen the QNX CAR application platform 2.0 for use in next-generation infotainment systems. How’s that for an embedded systems presence?
“For RIM, that may not appear to be as big an issue. With BB10, the Waterloo, Ont.-based company looks to be focusing on its core audience — power business users, rather than the consumers that the “Consumer” Electronics Show caters to.”
It’s not that RIM isn’t attending CES 2013 because it’s focusing on the business market. It’s because they have a product (a consumer product no less) launching in 22 days. It wouldn’t make any sense for them to be showing off legacy devices with a new device just around the corner.
RIM is clearly looking to own its launches with BB10 and not piggyback on shows such as CES. BlackBerry World and Jam are the new must-attend RIM conferences just like WWDC is the must-attend conference for Apple and I/O is the conference for Google.
“BlackBerry and Windows apps? For CES exhibitors, they’re an afterthought at best.
‘We’re in talks to integrate with [BlackBerry Messenger] and we’re working on a Windows version,’ says Jay Samit, president of ooVoo, a video chat service. ‘But they’re such a niche market.’”
A video chat app is not the best app company to interview considering it comes native on BlackBerry 10. There are plenty of developers that don’t see BlackBerry 10 as a niche, and it’s important to balance any article about porting with something explaining the reasons why developers port. Services that require huge numbers of users clearly don’t look at BB10 and Windows Phone right away, there isn’t the volume. That’s just a reality of the time it takes to build a user base. But companies that can leverage smaller user groups, such as games, have great experiences with low volume platforms.
In the end, CES doesn’t make sense for RIM to attend from a hardware launch perspective, but even from a software perspective it doesn’t make sense. CES is not a software show. It’s about hardware. It would be a terrible show for RIM to attend to try and drum up attention for the BlackBerry platform. And if you’re going to say RIM is absent from the show, you’re completely forgetting that RIM owns QNX.
You can read the full CBC article at this link..
