Android

Pent up demand for Playbook Applications?

by alec on July 22, 2011

Want proof of pent-up demand for Blackberry Playbook applications?  Announced in March, and reportedly due to be available later this year, an early beta of the Playbook Android Player was inadvertently made available for a short time on Blackberry.com yesterday.  RIM pulled the software, and issued a statement telling people not to use it, but not before a group of developers on Crackberry.com grabbed it and started testing every Android app they could get their hands on.  What you can see from the conversation on Crackberry.com is that although the leaked code is an early beta, many Android applications worked immediately.

Don’t feel like hacking your Playbook to see what Android Player looks like?  No problem.  The Crackberry team has helpfully posted the following video so you don’t have to.

Source: Crackberry.com

Are you excited?  I am.

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Playbook first tablet to be FIPS certified

by alec on July 22, 2011

The Blackberry Playbook is now the first tablet to gain FIPS certification, which means that it meets US government standards for data security and encryption.  Playbook also won Best in Show and Best of FOSE in handheld devices at the federal government IT conference in Washington DC this past week.

This certification and these awards certainly reinforce RIM’s position that the Playbook is the first “professional grade” tablet on the market, and may be a good indicator of how the market will evolve – Android and iPad devices for consumers, and Playbook for professionals.   Now, what will Avaya and Cisco do?  Both companies have announced  business focused tablets as well, but built on Android.

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Does Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype change anything?

May 10, 2011
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So Microsoft has acquired Skype for $8.5 billion.  Whew!  It’s a breathtaking sum, especially for a company who’s bread and butter is the prepaid telecom business. Of all those rumoured to have been in the hunt for Skype, however, Microsoft was the suitor most able to take advantage of Skype’s network, ecosystem, and technology.  Their [...]

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Deathmatch: Ostrich versus Troll

March 22, 2011
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We shouldn’t feel a lot of sympathy for Barnes & Noble, Foxconn and Inventec.  These are the creators of the Barnes and Noble Nook e-book reader, and they’re also the folks that Microsoft sued yesterday, alleging infringement of a series of Microsoft patents in that same device. The patents are listed below. 5,889,522: System provided [...]

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Is RIM doomed to repeat history?

February 11, 2011

I invite you to cast your memories back to 1992.  No, not the election of Bill Clinton, but the IBM launch of OS/2 2.0. OS/2 2.0, IBM’s multi-tasking OS with the ability to run Windows applications in virtual machines was widely touted as “a better Windows than Windows”.  And indeed, compared to Windows 3.1, it [...]

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Lies, damn lies, and statistics

December 1, 2010
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Like a lot of mobile software developers, we track which handsets and operating systems are most popular. It’s critical to our business to understand which platforms have market share, are in ascendancy, decline and so on.  That’s the reason I read Royal Pingdom’s study of mobile OS usage so carefully this morning.  Region by region, [...]

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If you MUST text and drive, try to do it safely, please!

September 30, 2010

As governments move uniformly to ban texting, and non-hands free talking while in the car, a whole crop of applications are starting to spring up to solve the problem that people will still want to text and talk while they drive; safely, of course. This week I’ve been pitched by two companies claiming to solve [...]

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RIM’s new strategy PlayBook

September 29, 2010

RIM’s new PlayBook looks pretty nice, doesn’t it?  At least from what we can see, anyway.  Launched a couple of days ago, its high pixel density display, snappy dual core processor, gobs of OS RAM, and Adobe Flash support (!) make it a very interesting entrant into the tablet market. In fact, let’s go one [...]

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Why iPhone is destined to dominate Android and BlackBerry in the market

January 24, 2010

One of the most common debates among smart phone cognoscenti is which platform will prevail — BlackBerry, Symbian, iPhone, Microsoft, or the latest entrant Android? Common thought is that the platform with the most developers will win, and currently that’s iPhone.  Many folks, however, having drunk the “open” kool-aid, believe that ultimately Android must win. [...]

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How long does it take to build a success like the smartphone market?

January 12, 2010

If one were to judge based on the 2010 CES alone, it seems that smart phones have arrived overnight in the market.  With the introduction of a bevy of new Android models like the Nexus One, apps launching like crazy, and a media jiggy for everything smart phone, it’s as if suddenly everyone is jumping [...]

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