The Importance of BlackBerry World for RIM’s Future

Blackberry World, an annual conference attended by the entire supporting ecosystem of Blackberry, is being held on May 1 – 3, 2012 in Orlando, Florida, United States. This year, BlackBerry World will also be host to BlackBerry 10 Jam, a special event for developers where Research in Motion (RIM), will introduce BlackBerry 10, its new operating system for BlackBerry devices that will be released in the second half of this year.

Tyler Lessard, former RIM vice president, said to PC World that the BlackBerry 10 operating system will be different from the existing BlackBerry operating system. Applications on Blackberry App World designed for current operating system will not be compatible with BlackBerry 10.

This makes BlackBerry 10 Jam an important event. In this event, RIM must be able to convince developers that the latest operating system can compete with other mobile operating systems like Android, iOS and Windows Phone. If developers see that the BlackBerry 10 has the chance, they will not hesitate to make apps for it. But if the developers are not convinced, BlackBerry 10 will be launched without the support of third party apps.

To assist third party developers, at this BlackBerry World RIM handed out latest BlackBerry prototype device called BlackBerry Dev Alpha to the developers. With the dev unit, developers will be able to start building apps for BlackBerry 10. However, RIM emphasized that the prototype is not a candidate of BlackBerry 10 device to be released later.

In addition, RIM will also release four beta tools for the development of BlackBerry 10. With the four tools, developers experienced in creating apps using Adobe Air, Android SDK, and HTML will find it easier to develop applications for BlackBerry 10 and also for the BlackBerry Playbook 2.0 operating system.

Other than the issue of developers, in BlackBerry World, the public will also be waiting for some words from RIM executives about the company's upcoming direction. Certainly, RIM does not want to rely on the sale of ‘cheap mobile phones’ in the third world countries but also competing at the highest level of smartphone technological innovations and live up to its own name, Research In Motion.