Hey, Alicia Keys. I totally love that new Drake single you’re quoting, too. But you’re BlackBerry’s official Creative Director and Spokesmom and that’s an iPhone you’re tweeting from. More »
When it comes to the business segment, it would seem that no company has more to lose than BlackBerry – as proven this week by stock prices falling at news the Home Depot will soon be switching to iPhone. The yet-unofficial announcement that Home Depot would be dropping their company-wide use of BlackBerry devices for Apple’s mobile phone option will have the company formerly known as RIM servicing around 100,000 devices fewer once the full switch is made. It would seem that stocks of BlackBerry dipped down as far as 6 percent in early trading today while the stock appears to be a bit more on the rebound as noon arrives.
The big switch will affect Home Depot store managers and corporate employees on the whole, while the general store employee population are not currently smartphone-carrying members, so to speak. When you work at Home Depot ranked any member Store Manager or above, a corporate smartphone plan goes into effect. With the brand new reveal and release of the BlackBerry 10 mobile OS, it would appear that the home repair and construction supply company is not suitably impressed.
Employees that work on the floor – those that you the customer would interact with on the daily, behind the counter and helping you load up planks of wood into your odd carts – will continue to use Motorola smartphones. According to inside sources speaking with Apple Insider, the iPhone switch will not affect the some 60,000 employees working with the “rugged” Motorola phones currently in use by floor employees.
This is not the first company to have tossed BlackBerry aside over the past few months, but given that Home Depot is the fifth largest retailer in the entire modern world, it’s certainly a significant one. Keep your eyes on the prize, BlackBerry, and make sure you prove yourselves to the enterprise universe real quick! Have a peek at the timeline below to see other recent BlackBerry happenings to keep track of the magic!
[Image via Martin Hajek]
Home Depot says no to BlackBerry 10: iPhone a go is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Here’s something we weren’t expecting, at least not this soon. Terry Cavanagh, the developer behind VVVVVV and Super Hexagon, has brought his newest creation to BlackBerry’s newest platform. In other words, Super Hexagon is now available from BlackBerry World for BlackBerry 10 devices (only the BlackBerry Z10 at this point).
Cavanagh said that a BlackBerry 10 port actually wasn’t something he had originally lined up, but a friend who helped port the game to Android wanted to do the same for BlackBerry 10, as he maintains the unofficial Blackberry port of openFrameworks. Cavanagh had no qualms of porting the game to yet another device and decided to give it a shot.
Cavanagh also says that a BlackBerry tablet version of the game (read: PlayBook) may come along eventually, but there’s no guarantees. In the meantime, Z10 owners in the UK and Canada can grab the game for $2.99. Users in the US will sadly have to wait until March to get their hands on a new Z10, but that’s just right around the corner.
If you’re not familiar with Super Hexagon, it’s essentially an action game that has you guiding a small cursor through gaps that appear randomly from six sides (hence “Hexagon”), but you have to act quick, since the barriers come at you pretty fast. Just like with VVVVVV, the game is meant to be an incredible challenge. It’s currently available for iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, and of course, BlackBerry 10.
Super Hexagon makes its way to BlackBerry 10 is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Not too long ago the folks at Crackberry were running a contest in which participants would state the things they would do and how far they were willing to go in order to win a Blackberry Z10. One participant by the name of Chris Vigna said that he’d be willing to dress up as a Z10 and teach his class about the virtues of Blackberry 10, and sure enough he did and has uploaded a photo of him doing just that! Chris is a lecturer at the University of Waterloo and teaches the subject of Kinesiology. It’s a pretty fun video and it’s nice to see that not all lecturers are as uptight as many would make them out to be. We have to wonder if perhaps his costume might have been a tad too distracting, but at the same time it looks like Blackberry managed to get themselves some free PR, especially in the sea of iOS and Android devices.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: HTC One Render Leaked To Give Us a Glimpse At Sense 5, BlackBerry Z10 Available In The U.S. For $999 Contract-Free,
In light of lackluster demand, BlackBerry (previously RIM) has elected to forego BlackBerry sales in Japan. According to Reuters, this is due to an extremely small market share in the nation of only 0.3-percent, a drastic fall from the already tiny 5-percent it previously held. Because of this, the burden of creating a Japanese version of its BlackBerry OS isn’t worth it.
While Reuters couldn’t reach the company for comment, the folks over at Engadget did get a response from a company spokesperson who confirmed the rumors. In the response, the spokesperson said: “Japan is not a major market for BlackBerry and we have no plans to launch BlackBerry 10 devices there at this time. However, we will continue to support BlackBerry customers in Japan.”
On Wednesday, we reported that BlackBerry 10 had a wildly successful launch day in Canada, where the company broke its own records by 50-percent. In addition, BlackBerry has reported that its sales in the UK are nearly thrice the best initial week sales of any other BlackBerry handset.
BlackBerry 10 isn’t set to release in the United States until near the end of March, with the Q10 not slated to hit shelves until several weeks after the Z10. Many feel this is a bad move on BlackBerry’s part, something that will ultimately hurt it, especially given the long duration over which BlackBerry 10 has been discussed and has been in development.
[via Engadget]
BlackBerry won’t be releasing any more handsets in Japan is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
One of the portions of BlackBerry’s BlackBerry 10 launch event that created a lot of chatter with BlackBerry fans is the fact the company secured a deal with Skype to allow its application to be made available on the BlackBerry 10 platform. During our time with the BlackBerry Z10, we noticed Skype was absent from BlackBerry World, even though the company said Skype was committed to making its application available on BlackBerry 10.
It looks like there wasn’t something wrong with our eyes as Skype has yet to officially launch on BlackBerry World, which Skype has confirmed its application is still being worked on as they “are working closely with BlackBerry to ensure the Skype for Android app runs great in the BlackBerry 10 environment.”
Yes – you read right that last sentence correctly. The Skype application that will be made available on BlackBerry 10 will be a port of the Skype for Android application. Considering Android applications ported to BlackBerry 10 aren’t fully optimized to be used on the OS, the new Skype application could be more of a letdown than we originally anticipated if BlackBerry and Skype don’t work together to make sure all of the app’s kinks are ironed out before it’s released into BlackBerry World.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Possible Samsung Galaxy S4 Camera Images Spotted On Google+, Steve Wozniak Thinks Apple Is Behind On Smartphones, 
The modern world of smartphones tend to favor full touchscreen models with extremely slim bezels a whole lot more compared to QWERTY models, but with the recent introduction of two new BlackBerry devices running on the BlackBerry 10 operating system, perhaps BlackBerry (previously known as RIM) is looking into the future by filing for two patents that would help hide the keys within a phone’s main body. Just how does that work? Well, look at the image above and you will have a better idea, as it more or less resembles concertinas in practice.
The concepts will pivot the relevant keys into place the moment you pull out a retractable segment of the device in order to begin typing. BlackBerry claims that this idea might just work out for both conventional smartphones in addition to the less practical design that sees keys located on opposite sides of a display, just like how the LG Doubleplay works. Will such slim phones with a keyboard built-in be part of the future? Who knows, it might just be way ahead of its time at the moment.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: LG Optimus 4X HD, Optimus L7 And L9 To Get Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, BlackBerry Sales To Cease In Japan, 
It looks as though yesterday’s report of demand for the BlackBerry Z10 was spot on as BlackBerry is announcing some good news in regards to its start in the U.K. and Canada.
According to BlackBerry, its new BlackBerry Z10 has been breaking records for the company left and right. In Canada, where the Z10 was made available yesterday, BlackBerry had its “best day ever for the first day of a launch of a new BlackBerry smartphone.” The Z10′s launch in Canada was “more than 50% better than any other launch day in our history in Canada.”
Over in the U.K., the BlackBerry Z10 has also seen some impressive sales as BlackBerry has seen “close to three times our best performance ever for the first week of sales for a BlackBerry smartphone.”
The BlackBerry Z10 is expected to be released in the U.S. this March, while its physical keyboard sibling, the BlackBerry Q10, shouldn’t be expected possibly until May or June. In the meantime, you U.S. readers can read our review of the BlackBerry Z10 and our hands-on of the BlackBerry Q10 to help whet your appetite for when these two devices are finally released.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Official Tamagotchi App Will Make Its Way Onto iOS And Android Soon, Leaked T-Mobile Roadmap Reveals Nokia Flame 4G For 24th April, 
It’s been made official, ladies and gentlemen, the first day BlackBerry 10 devices have been on sale in Canada, they’ve broken all previous records. Those records are BlackBerry’s own, with the BlackBerry Z10 knocking out all previous launch-day records by 50%. This good news comes alongside the company announcing UK sales to be “close to three times” the company’s best first-week performance for sales of any one BlackBerry smartphone. Sounds like they’re off to a good start!
Official word from BlackBerry is that “in Canada, yesterday was the best day ever for the first day of a launch of a new BlackBerry smartphone.” That’s saying something for the Canada-based manufacturer and developer of the entire BlackBerry lineup. With the launch of BlackBerry 10 came the all-touch BlackBerry Z10 smartphone, the first in a series of smartphones to run the new operating system. With this device being the one and only smartphone to be on the market here at launch with BlackBerry 10, the success should be well received.
BlackBerry’s announcement that the first full week of BlackBerry Z10 sales are not double, but nearly three times as good as they’ve been with any previous release should also be seen as a sign that the company has done something right. Currently the BlackBerry Z10 is only available inside Canada and the UK, with a developer edition Red model appearing in the mail for developers around the world this week as well. That developer edition unit was (and continues to be) available to developers participating in a special offer where they create an app for BlackBerry 10 in time for its full final launch – grab one!
With word straight from Thorsten Heins, President & CEO of BlackBerry on this great success, we must hold our BlackBerry 10 flags high, hoping for the best! Have a peek at the timeline below to see additional insights and a full review of the BlackBerry Z10 as well.
BlackBerry 10 has best launch day in history (in Canada) is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
This week the folks at ABI have released a study that predicts a massive 1.4 billion smartphones to be in-use by the end of 2013, 798 million of them Android-based. This set of numbers also suggests that Windows Phone will be in around 45 million smartphones while Apple will retain the number 2 spot with 294 million units – iPhones, the lot of them. This study suggests that by the end of this year the world will have 268 million tablets in-use – seem to you like there’s a bit of a difference in the way we use “smart” electronics?
This set of studies is, of course, all based on estimates and analysis, here suggesting that the number of tablets we’ll see by the end of this year represents a massive 125 percent growth over 2012′s final set. Of this 2013 year-end set, 62 percent will be Apple’s hardware while 28 percent will be Android-based. That’s quite the flip-flop compared to how the smartphone universe is trending.
ABI has predicted that 20 million BlackBerry 10 devices will be up and running by the end of 2013 – this boding relatively well for the company that just launched their new operating system here in the first quarter of the year. While some have a less-than-hopeful outlook for the company formerly known as RIM (now just called BlackBerry), even 20 million devices (still less than Windows Phone) is better than none. Windows Phone’s numbers on the end-of-2013 predictions chart shows Microsoft’s mobile OS to be hitting at around 3 percent of the market’s total.
The team at ABI let it be known that the annual smartphone growth rate has been factored in here to get that final 1.4 billion units was a fabulous 44 percent. That number is down from their previous reports showing 2012′s 45 percent growth rate over the year before, this 1 percent change either signifying that we’re reaching a plateau or that we’re simply having a slightly irregular amount of sales change.
[via Venture Beat]
ABI: Android king of end-of-2013 “1.4 billion smartphone” estimate is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
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