Research In Motion Ltd. is testing a touch-screen smartphone with a slide-out keyboard, the Wall Street Journal reports. The phone runs on a new version of the BlackBerry operating system and works much like an iPhone, letting users swipe through screens and expand images with their fingers. It also has a universal search bar that lets users scour all the phone's data and some data online as well.
RIM is also is reported to be experimenting with a tablet device to serve as a larger-screen companion to its BlackBerry phone. That device, which is in an early stage of development, will connect to cellular networks when tethered to a BlackBerry phone.
The new offerings come as RIM faces increased competition from devices built by Apple and those that run on the Android operating system from Google Inc.
RIM still sells more smartphones globally than any company besides Nokia Corp., and last year grabbed 19 percent of the world market for smartphones, according to Strategy Analytics. But RIM's share of the North American market is slipping.
RIM's share of the North American smartphone market by shipments dropped to 38 percent in the March 2010 quarter from 54 percent in the first quarter of 2009.
Apple's share climbed from 18 percent to 23 percent over the same period.
The new slate device comes with four gigabytes of storage space and a five megapixel camera, the Wall Street Journal reports.
RIM is also readying a new Internet browser that renders Web pages much faster than the current browser, and allows users to access more than one Web page at a time, people familiar with the device said.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
RIM Readying Tablet PC, New BlackBerry OS
Labels:
Android,
BlackBerry,
Google,
iPhone,
RIM
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Consumer Feedback on Smartphone AI Isn't That Helpful
It is a truism that consumers cannot envision what they never have seen, so perhaps it is not too surprising that artificial intelligence sm...
-
We have all repeatedly seen comparisons of equity value of hyperscale app providers compared to the value of connectivity providers, which s...
-
It really is surprising how often a Pareto distribution--the “80/20 rule--appears in business life, or in life, generally. Basically, the...
-
Is there a relationship between screen size and data consumption? One might think the answer clearly is “yes,” based on the difference bet...
No comments:
Post a Comment