ORLANDO — So far at BlackBerry World, there hasn't been much talk about the "enterprise refocus" that Research In Motion CEO Thorsten Heins made headlines with at the company's last earnings call.
At all the meetings, panels and keynotes I've attended so far, it's been clear the siren call of the consumer market still commands a large portion of RIM's attention.
Take one example: The way-cool time-shifting camera functions in BlackBerry 10 that Heins showed off in his keynote.
Although other hardware companies are doing impressive stuff with camera phones (notably HTC), RIM's approach is novel and innovative. Still, it's difficult to see the feature being spectacularly useful in a corporate boardroom, or even a factory floor.
The hypothetical situation Heins gave was when someone — specifically a family member — closes their eyes during a shot. Sounds pretty consumer to me.
You can hardly blame RIM for these continued consumer overtures. After all, companies its size don't turn on a dime. BlackBerry 10 has been in the works for almost three years, and Heins has only been CEO for a couple of months. And many mobile features have crossover appeal between business customers and the consumer on the street.
However, the downside to operating with consumer-focused strategies means RIM inevitably plays the role of underdog. Just look at what it's doing on the developer front: RIM is showering developers with love here at BlackBerry World, doing its best to elevate its software tools by giving app designers access to core device functions they might not get on, say, iOS.
They also make it super simple to create apps, throwing lots of weight behind the platform-agnostic standard of HTML5.
But wait, there's more! At Tuesday's BlackBerry 10 Jam developer keynote, RIM said it would guarantee that anyone who makes an app for BlackBerry 10 (and it's approved) would make $10,000 minimum.
If the app falls short of making that much, RIM will write a check for the difference.
This why it's so clear RIM is still fighting the war of consumer platforms with Apple and Google. Writing $10,000 checks to developers is one way to boost its relatively miniscule App World selection so it can compete with the big boys.
Alas, it's not going to work. RIM is trying to date developers that are already married to iOS and Android. Sure, they might hang out with BlackBerry a little — if you're a developer, why not be on as many platforms as possible?
But there's no way they're turning their back on their sugar daddies. Apple and Google's stores are where the big money is — enough potential cash to dwarf that $10,000 guarantee.
That's why it's perplexing to hear RIM backtrack on the enterprise angle. Being the mobile choice for business is the BlackBerry brand's clear differentiator, but it appears to be taking a lot of its enterprise relationships for granted.
It shouldn't, for many reasons — one being Windows Phone.
While RIM has been focusing on fighting Apple and Google, Micorosoft has been making headlines with its Windows Phone hardware, such as the Nokia Lumia 900. Around the same time BlackBerry 10 launches this fall, so will Windows 8, along with (presumably) Windows Phone 8.
If Microsoft follows its present course, Windows 8 will finally unify Windows as a platform, with all devices — PCs, tablets and phones — running the same software. And that's going to present a huge opportunity for Windows Phone as a go-to mobile platform for business.
After all, if you're already using Microsoft products on the PC side of your workflow, why wouldn't you integrate them in mobile as well?
That strategy take a while to get going, since Microsoft still hasn't put all the pieces in place. Once it does, businesses tend to upgrade to the next version of Windows at a snail's pace. Still, it represents a long-term challenge for RIM on the business side, one that Microsoft has been readying for years.
That's the war RIM needs to start prepping for — not just with Microsoft, but with Apple and Google encroaching on its territory via the "consumerization of IT" phenomenon. RIM still has a shot with BlackBerry 10, but it needs to stop playing by others' rules (such as the app count of your store).
It also needs this reminder: trying to compete for every single mobile customer is exactly what got the company into trouble in the first place.
BONUS: BlackBerry 10?s Best Features
Saying BlackBerry 10 is all about the "flow" between apps, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins showed how users could quickly see other apps running by "glancing back" via menus that peek out from the side.
The cameras on BlackBerry 10 phones will be able to capture imagery before and after you take the shot, letting you "go back in time" in case, say, someone closes their eyes. In his keynote, Heins showed how it could be targeted by area.
RIM's known for physical keyboards, but the onscreen keyboard steals the show in BlackBerry 10. The phone predicts what words you want to type, putting them above the keys they start with. If you want to delete entire words, just start swiping backward.
Cascades are a BB10 developer tool (in beta) that lets app creators easily add dynamic elements to items like buttons, check boxes and fields. They're compatible with multiple programming languages, and animations are built in: for example, a check box doesn't just appear, it "springs" into place, as RIM describes. There's also a Cascades plug-in for Photoshop.
Individual apps can check the battery status and either warn the user that the task they're about to start might result in data loss, or take precautions, like dimming the screen.
Saying BlackBerry 10 is all about the "flow" between apps, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins showed how users could quickly see other apps running by "glancing back" via menus that peek out from the side.
The cameras on BlackBerry 10 phones will be able to capture imagery before and after you take the shot, letting you "go back in time" in case, say, someone closes their eyes. In his keynote, Heins showed how it could be targeted by area.
RIM's known for physical keyboards, but the onscreen keyboard steals the show in BlackBerry 10. The phone predicts what words you want to type, putting them above the keys they start with. If you want to delete entire words, just start swiping backward.
Cascades are a BB10 developer tool (in beta) that lets app creators easily add dynamic elements to items like buttons, check boxes and fields. They're compatible with multiple programming languages, and animations are built in: for example, a check box doesn't just appear, it "springs" into place, as RIM describes. There's also a Cascades plug-in for Photoshop.
Individual apps can check the battery status and either warn the user that the task they're about to start might result in data loss, or take precautions, like dimming the screen.
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