We were told that the BlackBerry Jam World Tour is only constrained by the number of BlackBerry Dev Alpha devices that RIM can manufacture. One of the reasons the manufacturing process isn’t up to speed is because there’s issues with some parts having an end-of-life and thus creating a bottleneck. It seems RIM has freed up more Alpha devices or they’ve just figured out a way to squeeze another city in the tour because Montreal is now an available as a city. You can’t currently register for the Montreal Jam session on July 11th, but surely you will be able to soon.
Continue reading ‘BlackBerry Jam World Tour Now Open for Montreal’
Tag: alec saunders
It’s great to see RIM shaking things up and challenging the same tired narrative that the media loves to repeat ad nauseum (ie “the hardware spec race is worth fighting” and “the number of apps on your platform dictates success”). At Mobile World Congress, Alec Saunders, VP of Developer Relations at RIM, gave some interesting sound bites including 500,000 apps and a 41MP camera are “meaningless”. It’s a good point that gives a little insight into how RIM is tackling the app ecosystem. Rather than concern yourself with building a platform to attract massive amounts of duplicates and fluff, build a platform that will entice the best of the best. That being said, lots of choice is always great, and duplicates isn’t so bad if you’re providing a variety of features and price points.
Continue reading ‘Alec Saunders, RIM Dev Relations, Says 500K Apps and a 41MP Camera Are Meaningless’
We are very excited about BBX. Everything RIM has said about the platform makes a lot of sense and the rumors we’re hearing about the first QNX device sound exciting. The only downside is that all the rumors point to a full touchscreen device, and we’ve never been happy with a full touchscreen BlackBerry. We need our keyboard. Regardless, a recent interview with Alec Saunders confirms some cool upcoming features of BBX, and we’re even more excited about the first devices to launch.
Continue reading ‘Alec Saunders Confirms Many Upcoming BBX Features’
We’re here at BlackBerry DevCon and Mike Lazaridis as well as Alec Saunders are on stage to talk about some cool things we can expect from App World, as well as the general developer community, in the coming months. Some things to expect include a better developer portal, enterprise apps, and more outreach from RIM to the developer community. There’s a lot going on and while we’re not sure exactly when this stuff is available, it’s great to see it’s coming. More after the break.
Continue reading ‘Mike Lazaridis and Alec Saunders Talk App World and Developer Community #BBDevCon’
Alec Saunders is no stranger to BlackBerryCool and the tech community. We’ve long followed Alec’s blog and have reposted some of his content that deals with BlackBerry and the smartphone industry. Alec is also an entrepreneur and it will be great to get someone at RIM who understands the needs of startups and small businesses, which seem to be really powering the smartphone app business. More after the jump.
Continue reading ‘Alec Saunders Joins RIM as VP of Developer Relations and Ecosystem Development’
Recently, analysts from all over the Internet have been saying that RIM is dead in the water and it’s only a matter of time until they become like Palm. It’s hard to not believe them too. Sure, RIM does have 40 million or so subscribers but much of their growth is coming from the consumer market, which they’re losing ground to Android and iPhone. The latest attempts to address the fierce competition for consumers includes the BlackBerry Torch, of which analysts claim sales weren’t great, and BlackBerry 6, which even RIM modestly called “not an evolutionary leap”. But does all of this really mean RIM is dead? I recently read a great article from Alec Saunders’ blog, addressing this issue and it’s an article many of these analysts would do well reading. The Secret Weapon that RIM is working on, which could be the equivalent of a giant Death Star of doom for Apple and Google, is the QNX acquisition.
Continue reading ‘Analysts Claim RIM is Dead but they Underestimate the QNX OS’
