Hasta La Gadget!

Worried that RIM might face any further delays of BlackBerry 10? Don’t be. CEO Thorsten Heins just confirmed at his BlackBerry Jam presentation that carrier testing for the new OS should begin this October, and that the platform launch is still slated for early 2013, as we were told this spring. As he’s mentioned in the past, Heins believes carriers are “excited” about the BlackBerry update, implying that this is what’s driving the certification process months in advance. Whether or not optimism is alive and well among providers, the news could be a relief for carriers and BlackBerry developers alike, either of which is likely keen to minimize the shift towards an Android-and-iPhone duopoly in the smartphone space.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

RIM: BlackBerry 10 carrier testing starts in October, OS remains on schedule originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Sep 2012 11:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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RIM is facing its first ever quarter with zero subscriber growth, industry experts predict, as it feels the pain of the delays around BlackBerry 10 and the increasing appeal of iOS and Android. Having managed to eke out more users despite aging software until now, RIM’s customer base is expected to plateau, The Globe and Mail reports, with enterprise customers defecting from BlackBerry devices. However, some aren’t even confident that BlackBerry 10 is sufficient to stem the user defections.

“This is the first quarter we are expecting zero subscriber growth – a loss in enterprise [customers] offset by a small gain in international consumer subs,” National Bank Financial’s Kris Thompson warned. “Starting next quarter, we see the sub base in a downward spiral with Blackberry 10 potentially slowing [the losses], but we’re not holding our breath.”

RIM’s headaches can’t be boiled down to solely software, hardware, or services, but instead are a combination of all three. BlackBerry 7 devices look tired in comparison to Apple’s iPhone and recent Android smartphones, while Microsoft is making a play for the enterprise market with Windows Phone 8.

A rise in developing market adoption and a surprise degree of appeal among young users has failed to bolster subscriptions for BlackBerry Exchange Server (BES), with low-cost messaging and cheap, prepaid plans instead providing the core appeal. Most recently, RIM announced it had 78m BlackBerry subscribers worldwide, though it has not broken that number down into specific demographics.

Recent leaks suggested BlackBerry interest in the US had dwindled significantly, with stores no longer replenishing stock.  Analysts aren’t always right, of course – the recent over-enthusiastic predications around Apple’s iPhone 5 sales are evidence of that – but with little to show for the past three months, the next quarterly results are very unlikely to be positive news.

[timleine]

BlackBerry growth stagnant warn experts (and BlackBerry 10 might not fix it) is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Your smartphone and / or tablet is just begging for an update. From time to time, these mobile devices are blessed with maintenance refreshes, bug fixes, custom ROMs and anything in between, and so many of them are floating around that it’s easy for a sizable chunk to get lost in the mix. To make sure they don’t escape without notice, we’ve gathered every possible update, hack, and other miscellaneous tomfoolery we could find during the last week and crammed them into one convenient roundup. If you find something available for your device, please give us a shout at tips at engadget dawt com and let us know. Enjoy!

Continue reading Refresh Roundup: week of September 17th, 2012

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Software, Mobile

Refresh Roundup: week of September 17th, 2012 originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 23 Sep 2012 20:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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RIM CEO Thorsten Heins has published an open apology letter to BlackBerry owners impacted by the service outage earlier today, revealing that up to 6-percent of the company’s user-base was affected. The company is still looking into what, exactly, caused the problem, Heins admits, but the chief exec insists that no messages or data was lost during the roughly three hours of downtime.

I want to apologize to those BlackBerry customers in Europe and Africa who experienced an impact in their quality of service earlier this morning” Heins wrote. “The BlackBerry service is now fully restored and I can report that no data or messages were lost. Up to 6 percent of our user base may have been impacted. Preliminary analysis suggests that those customers may have experienced a maximum delay of 3 hours in the delivery and reception of their messages.”

The issue was first acknowledged by RIM’s UK Twitter account in the early hours of Friday morning, though at the time no explanation was given for the problems users were encountering. A follow-up message several hours later claimed the service was back online, though again no technical details were revealed.

That may have to wait until RIM has finished its own investigation. “We are conducting a full technical analysis of this quality of service issue and will report as soon as it concludes” Heins wrote. “I again want to apologize to those customers who were impacted today.”

RIM CEO: “Up to 6 percent” suffered BlackBerry outage is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

RIM has restored BlackBerry service after an embarrassing outage today, with users across Europe, the Middle East and Africa reporting problems with their smartphone phones. The Canadian company took to Twitter to admit there was a widespread issue affecting users in the three regions, with at least three hours passing before the service was apparently restored. The outage comes nearly on the anniversary of a longer period of BlackBerry downtime, which also synchronized with an Apple launch.

Then, in early October 2011, RIM’s systems went down for roughly three days, with the company blaming a high-capacity switch failing and dragging down the redundancy systems with it. Unfortunately, it also happened at the same time as Apple launched iMessage, its own instant-messaging system and a rival to RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger.

Whether that cost RIM any users or prompted any specific defections to iOS is unclear, and the company’s tardiness in getting BlackBerry 10 devices to market – now expected to happen in early 2013 – is a more likely cause of the firm’s ailing fortunes. BlackBerry 10 will refocus RIM on touchscreen devices, a sensible move given the trends of the industry overall, though it will face a struggle rebuilding market-share against iOS and Android.

Today’s outage, the cause yet to be explained, is also unlikely to be the breaking point for users, but it’s another notch away at RIM’s “enterprise-standard” reputation. Microsoft is expected to make a play for a similar market with Windows Phone 8, emphasizing how well the smartphone OS integrates with Windows 8.

Update: RIM CEO Thorsten Heins has commented on the outage and clarified that it impacted two, not three, continents.

[via The Globe and Mail]

BlackBerry outage downs users on three continents [Updated] is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.