BlackBerry 10 is the final stretch now. After a few delays, things are on track for a solid launch in 2013. RIM has locked down a date for a global launch event at the end of January, so it's full steam ahead now as the finishing touches are put on the new OS and the BlackBerry 10 platform. RIM CEO Thorsten Heins had another round of interviews with various media outlets and let everyone know that things are moving along on pace and BlackBerry 10 will be ready to go in 2013.
Heins hasn't hidden the fact that RIM needs to succeed with BlackBerry 10. They've taken things at full blast since the announcement of the new platform and haven't looked back since. As Heins told Wired, "We owned the mistakes we made. We took responsibility and changed stuff." BlackBerry 10 is being built from the ground up on the QNX platform. BlackBerry 10 will not replace the original BlackBerry OS, as that will still supported for some time. Dubbed a "mobile computing platform", Heins says BlackBerry 10 will soon replace even your laptop. "You will not carry a laptop within three to five years." he told the New York Times.
As things go forward, RIM is still pushing developers with worldwide hackathons and events in which to populate BlackBerry App World. Their developers have responded in great numbes so far, but at the same, Heins notes that it's not all about the ecosystem. While RIM want's to have plenty of high-caliber apps at launch, they are also looking to localize content. "The tactic we are deploying is by country and by region ... We are aiming to have the most important 200 to 400 apps available." Heins said in an interview with Reuters.
Thorsten also knows that fighting back against the likes of Apple and Google won't be an easy task with BlackBerry 10. He previously said there is no reason RIM can't hold the number three spot in mobile, and when speaking with Cnet went on to say:
A lot of respect for what those others are doing. They have great engineers, they have great designers, too, but there is OSes out there that are five years old, there is OSes out there are are starting to fragment. So we feel we have a pretty good shot at it. But it will be a competitive domain, make no mistake about it.
With only around ten weeks until RIM's launch event, you can be sure that everyone is hard at work making sure that BlackBerry 10 is everything it can be and more. There is no room for RIM to slouch at this point and in just under a year at the helm or RIM, Thorsten Heins has been all about getting things done.
Ultimately it will be the consumers that say yay or nay to BlackBerry 10. Of course we already love BlackBerry 10, but until the public gets a hold of it there is no way of knowing just how well it will do. "We still have to prove ourselves. The final verdict is with the consumer and the enterprise customer." Heins told Wired.
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