08May

With 70 Million Registered Users, Viber Brings Beta Apps To BlackBerry, Windows Phone

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We’ve been covering Viber since the very beginning, through the launch of an Android app and the addition of photo/location sharing capabilities, to the moment the company announced 50 million users, 150 million calls, and a billion text messages per month. In fact, those milestones only sprung up a few weeks ago in February, and even more achievements are already being announced today.

Between February and now, Viber has already jumped from 50 million users to 70 million users, who just so happen to talk for more than a billion minutes and send over a billion text messages per month. Daily, those numbers translate to over 7 million calls and 40 million texts, within which location sharing is being used about 10 percent of the time.

With growth like that, the migration onto new platforms only makes sense, which is why the company has announced versions of its highly popular VoIP/messaging app for BlackBerry and Windows Phone. The app will launch in beta on both platforms.

Viber for BlackBerry Beta and Viber for Windows Phone 7 Beta will come with Viber messaging, letting people share photos, text, and their location with other Viber users. There’s no friend requesting whatsoever — if they’re on Viber, the app will know and let you message them.

Once Viber feels comfortable about the messaging capabilities on these beta apps, it will launch full versions of the Viber app (voice calls included) for both platforms.

Turns out Robin hit the nail on the head with this prediction: “My educated guess is that this will become a stunningly big hit in no time.”

Click to view slideshow.



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04May

Why Can’t BlackBerry Muddle Through? They’re Not The 99%

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Horace Dediu at Asymco has run the numbers and it’s not looking good. Samsung and Apple now control an estimated 99% of vendor profits with HTC scraping in with 1%. BlackBerry and Nokia barely register and, in fact, form a loss.

First, I’d like to note why Dediu believes carriers are willing to cede so much of their profit to Apple and, presumably, Samsung. It’s mostly about lock-in, a sort of bear hug that encourages customers to stay put in the long run. He writes:

Indeed, they willingly hand over these premiums because the iPhone ensures a competitive advantage or preserves their customer base from churning. The calculations that go into a decision to range the iPhone are compelling enough that 250 operators made the decision (though, crucially, there are still 250 who have not).

With numbers like these, it’s easy to see where things are headed. Although I’ll give Nokia the benefit of the doubt this quarter with the rise of the Lumia line, these numbers don’t look good for runners-up, including LG, Motorola, and RIM.

Arguably, those three manufacturers could pull off a coup – a hot phone like the Droid can push Motorola back into the space and LG is at least popular outside of the U.S. But, like Sony, RIM is an established player with a tendency toward a closed system that serves a dedicated and dwindling audience rather than a general consumer. Buying into RIM at this point, especially with the prevalence of iTunes content and, increasingly, Google’s own marketplace, is akin to a suicide pact.

By this time, there should be few compelling reasons to expect anyone – in the next half-decade say – will be able to unseat Samsung’s dominance. While I’m of the opinion that Apple is in a much more precarious position in the long run, I’d give them the next five years as well. To the rest in the 1% of mobile profits? I’d recommend a realignment and/or moving into something more lucrative.

via TUAW



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02May

LTE BlackBerry PlayBook Coming This Year, Says RIM CEO

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RIM is keeping the PlayBook party going. While speaking at a BlackBerry World breakfast with RIM CEO Thorsten Heins stated the company plans to launch an LTE-enabled PlayBook by the end of the year. However, the CEO didn’t detail the projected release date, price or available wireless carrier.

This is a smart move for RIM. Rather than spending the time and resources producing another tablet, RIM is instead concentrating efforts on making sure upcoming software works on existing hardware. During a recent trip Rim’s Waterloo campus, the company made it clear to TechCrunch that it is very much committed to bringing BlackBerry 10 to the PlayBook.

The PlayBook has actually aged quite well. The computing hardware and screen is still competitive to current tablets on the market. BlackBerry 10 would likely make existing PlayBook owners very happy although by the time the OS hits later this year, companies and consumers might shy away from the older tablet. But as long as the 4G PlayBook isn’t tied to a two-year contract like other carrier-sold tablets, RIM might be able to sell several to those still addicted to their crackberrys.



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01May

RIM Officially Opens BlackBerry 10 To Developers, Greets Them With Dev Alpha Devices

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RIM has caught plenty of flack these past few months, thanks to (among other things) a multi-day global outage, disappointing PlayBook sales, and a dramatic management shake-up. Beyond all of this, the news that their next-generation BlackBerry 10 operating system wouldn’t see the light of day until the latter parts of 2012 seemed like yet another nail in RIM’s coffin.

But the beleaguered company is trying to move past all of that at BlackBerry World. While we regular folk still have months to wait until the first BB10 products make it to store shelves, RIM has just officially opened up the BlackBerry 10 platform to developers at BlackBerry World, starting with the release of their BB10 beta development toolkits and the BlackBerry 10 Developer Alpha device.

As you may have guessed from the announcement, RIM’s game plan at this point is to give developers as much lead time as possible to develop applications to launch alongside BlackBerry 10, though we’re still no closer to figuring out when that launch will actually take place.

In fact, they’ve already managed to gain the support of some considerable third parties — fitness app developer Endomondo has already committed to the platform, as have the mobile game peddlers at Gameloft. Other partners include Occipital, Poynt, Truphone, and PixelMags, to name just a few. RIM hopes that by locking up some big-name partners, they’ll be able to entice smaller developers to take a chance on their platform as well.

“Anyway you want [to develop], we can support that,” said Adam Nanjee, RIM’s head of Social Media Partnerships. “Typically it’s been ‘Hey, come and join BlackBerry.’ Here we’re saying ‘Hey, you may already have an Android app, but it’s very easy to port to our platform’ and if they’re going for an HTML5 cross-platform strategy, we can support that as well.”

RIM’s app store numbers pale in comparison to larger rivals like Apple and Google, but representatives we spoke to were quick to spin that as a positive. According to developer focus groups the company held, more than a few beleaguered developers claimed that they could actually be found in BlackBerry App World as opposed to be being drowned out by scores of new submissions in competing app stores.

Meanwhile, the move to make the Dev Alpha device available to attendees of RIM’s developer-oriented BlackBerry Jam conference isn’t a surprise, but it’s a clear indicator that RIM is taking the BlackBerry 10 launch environment very seriously. After all, pre-release events for the PlayBook didn’t offer developers that sort of early access, and the company seems determined to learn from their mistakes.

All of the leaked Dev Alpha images that have surfaced over the past few days are indeed legit, and while it isn’t much to look at (imagine a scaled-down version of the PlayBook), that’s all part of RIM’s plan.

The thousands of devices being made available to developers at today’s BlackBerry Jam event are the same as the devices used internally to test code (save for the additional of some BlackBerry branding), and during our time with RIM they repeatedly confirmed that the Dev Alpha devices bear no resemblance to any BlackBerry 10 devices in terms of either hardware or software.

Sadly, this means that we’re still no closer to getting a feel for what BlackBerry 10 will actually look like. It’s a definite bummer, but it was perhaps to be expected — RIM is all about playing the expectations game now, and slapping the BB10 name on a device that essentially only has a web browser and a file system wouldn’t reflect too well on them.

As such, they’re also keeping mum on the thing’s specs — aside from the device itself proclaiming it has 16GB of onboard storage, all representatives would confirm is that it has a 4.2-inch screen running at 1280×768. After playing with one for a few brief moments its status as a developer-only device has been cemented by sheer lack of functionality included, though it did feel rather comfortable in the hand.

RIM CEO Thorsten Heins is in the middle of his BlackBerry World keynote address as you read this, so stay tuned — we’ll keep you posted on anything new or interesting Mr. Heins shares with us.



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01May

Early Look: BlackBerry 10′s Smart New Take On Touchscreen Typing

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As it stands, most of BlackBerry 10 is still shrouded in mystery. Not even the Dev Alpha devices that will be made available to developers offer a glimpse of RIM’s new software — they’re running a modified version of the PlayBook OS instead.

All that said, RIM hopes to whet our appetites with glimpses at some of the nifty little touches that BlackBerry 10 will sport when it sees a widespread launch later this year. TechCrunch went to Waterloo and met with Vivek Bhardwaj, RIM’s Head of Software Portfolio, who took a few moments to give us one such sneak peek — an early look at BlackBerry 10′s keyboard, still a work in progress.

Fine, it doesn’t sound like the most thrilling way to spent 15 minutes, but let’s not forget that messaging and typing have always been a big part of the BlackBerry DNA and it isn’t exactly the kind of thing the company can afford to screw up.

“We feel that no one does this well,” Bhardwaj said of mobile typing.

Thankfully, the keyboard doesn’t disappoint. On the all-touch Dev Alpha device, the keyboard is large and nicely-spaced, with a small gap in between each row to help minimize errant taps. Even at this stage, everything seemed nice and fluid which is a definite plus when the keyboard leans on a few additional touch gestures to work properly.

Swiping to the left across the keyboard deletes your last input for instance, while swiping up changes to the numeric/symbol keyboard. That same swipe up gesture is used when the keyboard attempts to guess the word you’re typing — according to Bhardwaj, users will be able to send those guessed words flying into their messages by swiping from where the word appears over keys.

Normally, it would take a little time for the keyboard to store and recognize specific words that a person may use often, but Bhardwaj notes that there’s a way to jump-start that process.

“It’ll basically do a scan of all your personal history, your email, your SMS, Facebook, Twitter — basically every conversation you’ve ever typed,” he said. One this process is complete, the device will have a solid starting point for the user’s linguistic quirks, though he didn’t mention if users could opt to skip the scan.

Not all of the changes will be immediately apparent to BlackBerry users — in fact, one such improvement is meant to be all but invisible to people pecking out their day’s messages. Bhardwaj revealed to us that there is in essence a second, invisible keyboard that conforms over time to how a user types.

Let’s be honest: we’ve all been there. I suffer from a condition I like to call “beefy thumb,” which renders a solid chunk of my text messages incomprehensible to all but my close friends thanks to mistyped letters. With that second keyboard in place though, the boundaries of each key will subtly change to ensure that users are actually hitting the keys that they intend to.

It sounds like a minor addition, but the impact could be a big one for users — they won’t care how or why they’re getting better at typing, just that they are. RIM is making it a point to woo go-getters who can’t live without quick and accurate messaging, so the notion of a keyboard customizes itself to each user has the potentially to be a real crowd pleaser. Of course, keyboards alone do not a great platform make — Bhardwaj promised that the keyboard would be one of a few aspects that would get the demo treatment during the BlackBerry World keynote, so stay tuned for more.



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