Hasta La Gadget!

Unfortunately, the crazy rumors that Google’s Nexus S would ship with a dual-core Orion processor didn’t pan out, which means we’re still waiting for a smartphone to ship with honest-to-goodness multicore silicon of any sort; it’s still unclear just how soon we’re going to see that wild dream come to fruition, but RIM’s Mike Lazaridis is talking like he wants to take the lead in making it happen. At D:Dive Into Mobile this evening, Waterloo’s outspoken co-CEO went on record that they’ll be taking the PlayBook’s QNX platform to smartphones just “as soon as [he has] dual core baseband CPUs,” though power consumption remains a limiting factor. At any rate, RIM seems to be fully acknowledging now both that QNX is a little too beefy for today’s smartphones and that BlackBerry OS isn’t quite beefy enough, which leaves these guys in a bit of a pinch until the dual-core revolution takes hold.

RIM’s Mike Lazaridis: QNX coming to BlackBerry phones when dual-core processors are ready originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Dec 2010 20:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Compared to last month’s report, it’s more or less business as usual in ComScore’s latest smartphone market share numbers for the three-month period ending in October, but there are a few interesting points worth calling out. Most notably, RIM’s decline seems to have accelerated — they’ve lost a claimed 3.5 percent of the US market in the latest period compared to 2.8 percent prior, which means they’re now down to 35.8 percent. Of course, that’s still more than enough to keep them comfortably in first place, but it’s a situation they’re going to want to reverse sooner or later — hopefully with TAT’s help. Meanwhile, Apple’s tacked on a slightly larger slice of the pie, but they’re still holding fairly steady; Google, meanwhile, continues its stratospheric rise, tacking on another 2.1 percent since last month’s numbers to hit 23.5 percent — nipping on Apple’s heels, we’d say. The most intriguing story, though, would have to be Microsoft: they’re lower than before at just 9.7 percent of the market, but these figures don’t include Windows Phone 7 yet — and clearly, no one’s buying WinMo 6.5 gear at this point. Should start to get interesting in the next month or two on that front.

ComScore: Android keeps chugging, BlackBerry falters, world awaits Windows Phone 7’s numbers originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 04 Dec 2010 19:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Things just got a little more heated in the RIM / Kik dispute: RIM’s now filed a Canadian patent infringement case against the company, just days after it pulled Kik Messenger from BlackBerry App World due to “breached contractual obligations.” We don’t have the complaint yet, so we’re not sure exactly what RIM’s patent covers, but it’s a fair bet to say it’s likely messaging-related — and it’s probably a safer bet to say that RIM doesn’t screw around when it comes to dealing with potential threats to BBM. You mess with the bull, you get the horns.

Update: The complaint is out now, and it’s a doozy — RIM says Kik founder Ted Livingston was a former RIM employee who worked on BBM. When he left RIM claims he joined the BlackBerry Alliance developer program to ostensibly develop a music sharing app, but wrote Kik Messenger instead, using what RIM claims is confidential information from the Alliance program. RIM’s also saying that Kik’s marketing steps on the BBM trademark. That’s a lot more than a simple patent issue, and it certainly explains why RIM reacted so violently to the app — we’ll see how Kik responds.

Continue reading RIM sues Kik in Canada for patent infringement (updated)

RIM sues Kik in Canada for patent infringement (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Dec 2010 13:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Despite the more recent releases of the Curve 8500 series and the Curve 3G, RIM has never really offered up a true successor to the venerable Curve 8900 — a device some would argue remains the prettiest that Waterloo has ever manufactured. Indeed, with the QVGA display and meager cam on the 3G, there’s a pretty magnificent gap between it and the business-class Bold 9700 / 9780… so we’re pretty excited to see a new model called the Curve 8980 get FCC approval. Oh, and what’s more, the filing’s now got access to a user’s manual and external shots where you can definitely picture this as being a proper optical pad-equipped follow-on to the 8900 of old, complete with a 3.2 megapixel cam with flash and — if we had to guess — a high-res display adopted either from the 9780 or the 8900. No word on a release, but here’s the kicker: as far as we can tell from the filing, it’s EDGE-only just like the device it replaces, which is pretty inexcusable for a device that’d presumably be released in 2011. Add 3G, though, and they’ve got a desperately-needed new model to slot in underneath the Bold.

BlackBerry Curve 8980 shows up in FCC, offers some glam shots originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Nov 2010 12:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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