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WES is the biggest BlackBerry show of the year so it only make sense that RIM's head honchos all be on hand. While RIM's Founder and Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis will speak tomorrow morning during the general assembly keynote (we'll be live blogging it,) he spoke to analysts during Capital Markets today. During the event he highlighted a couple of interesting statistics, showed off a preview of BlackBerry 6 (hopefully this will be in the keynote tomorrow and we'll bring you a video) and from their handled some pretty intense Q&A. Some of the big takeaways:
- App World Downloads - RIM has never been one to hand out App World statistics, but apparently now they are and they aren't too shabby. Mike said App World is delivering a million downloads per day.
- OS 6.0 Availability - Coming in the next calendar quarter.
- OS 6.0 Input - As thought (and makes sense) OS 6.0 will work on touch and non-touch devices.
- OS 6.0 Backwards Compatibility - It seems the analysts in the room had the same burning question we have in terms of what current in-market devices will get OS 6.0. Mike L. didn't answer the question directly, but did make it clear that RIM will continue to do what they always do - carry on support for older devices as it makes sense (within memory limitations). So expect to see 6.0 launch on a new device and from there we'll see it trickle out to at least some current devices.
- WebKit clarification - Mike L. clarified that the WebKit browser is an integrated part of OS 6.0. It's not a standalone app (you won't be able to install the WebKit browser on OS 5.0 for example). He further elloborated saying that it's not really a "webkit browser" but a WebKit rendering engine, which can be/is leveraged in areas/apps beyond just the browser.