As we sat in the the Research In Motion First Quarter Fiscal 2012 earnings call today, Mike Lazaridis took the time today to address the concerns surrounding delays with new BlackBerry smartphones. Some of the highlights from that call can be found below:
RIM realized through their product development that consumer demand had shifted, and as such -- required new hardware and new chip sets to be adapted to the BlackBerry platform in order to stay competitive.
With the launch of the BlackBerry PlayBook, RIM put resources forward to that launch and working on the QNX OS -- given the time frames needed, if QNX was to be ported to BlackBerry Smartphones it would have left RIM with no smartphone lineup for all of 2011.
Technical carrier acceptance was an issue at the time, and things have moved slowly in that area. Once one device meets carrier requirements -- all devices running the same OS (BlackBerry 7) should see rapid acceptance and ultimately release.
Looking at the information provided on the call, RIM was deep into their development cycle but then realized the shift in the smartphone market and as such, needed to adjust their upcoming line-up. This took time, which in turn also took more time to due the need of meeting carrier demands as well. But, the devices are coming and once they start rolling out, they will all be rolled out together rather then a staggered release.