BBM coming to iOS, Android

BlackBerry unveils lower-cost Q5 QWERTY smartphone, says BBM coming to iOS, Android

Reuters, May 15, 2013

BlackBerry announced plans on Tuesday to offer its popular instant messaging system on rival devices and introduced a new mid-tier smartphone targeted at countries where its faded brand remains strong.

Tapping into its still robust popularity outside North America, BlackBerry said the new Q5 smartphone would be available starting in July in selected markets in Europe, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. The Q5 includes the tiny qwerty keyboard that still sets BlackBerry apart from most rivals.

It gave no prices, but as BlackBerry opens the latest chapter of its turnaround attempt, it will clearly target a younger, more price-sensitive crowd with the device, which will be available in colors including pink, red and white.

"BlackBerry is clearly aiming to replicate the success of the BlackBerry Curve in emerging markets," Ovum analyst Adam Leach said, referring to the company's Curve smartphone, which has been popular in India and other developing countries.

But other manufacturers are also seeking a foothold in those markets with low-cost devices, Leach noted.

BlackBerry, under its old name Research In Motion, virtually invented the concept of on-your-hip email with a series of blocky devices with tiny thumb-operated keyboards.

But in recent years it has bled market share to Apple Inc's iPhone and Samsung Electronics Co's popular line of Galaxy devices powered by Google's Android operating system, forcing it into big job cuts and a huge rethink of its products and priorities.

"You know it hasn't been that easy and you also know there is still a lot of work to do, but man, we have reached solid ground with this company," Heins told delegates at the BlackBerry Live conference in Orlando, Florida.

To those who ask if the company can survive the drastic changes he brought in, Heins said: "We are not only still here, we are firing on all cylinders as a company."

Shares in BlackBerry were about 4 percent lower early on Tuesday afternoon as analysts wondered what the Q5's price tag would be. They also questioned if the move to open up BBM, as the BlackBerry Messaging service is popularly known, was too little, too late.

Former co-CEO Jim Balsillie had sought to offer BBM on iPhones and other rivals in a broad strategy shift before he was overruled. He cut all ties to the company early last year.

Heins said BlackBerry Messaging will be offered free of charge to consumers using rival phones.

"This is such a great experience, it is just too good to keep it only to ourselves. It's time to bring BBM to a greater audience," he said, noting that BBM is used for 10 billion messages a day.

BlackBerry long relied on BBM to keep customers tied to its own devices, so the shift recognizes a new reality where many customers have already fled.

"The guy on the iPhone is gone already, he's lost," said Colin Gillis, a technology analyst at BGC Partners in New York. "The point is the guy on the BlackBerry can at least now talk to his friends."

Once a unique tool to send messages without running up SMS charges, BBM now competes with mobile instant messaging products from Facebook, Apple and others, and less directly with the micro-blogging service Twitter.

Heins said he is confident that BlackBerry can offer the service more broadly without losing its own customers.

BlackBerry has gambled its future on new devices using its new BlackBerry 10 operating system ), and Heins said the two new BB10 smartphones that BlackBerry has already started selling have given it its most successful launch year.

The touchscreen Z10 ) device is now available in many countries, including the United States, and Heins said the keyboard Q10 ) phone will be launched in the United States next month.

BlackBerry's volatile shares were down 3.7 percent at $15.29 in New York early on Tuesday afternoon.

BlackBerry Q10 review

BlackBerry Q10 review: The keyboard strikes back

Associated Press, April 24, 2013

The BlackBerry has finally caught up to the world of touch-screen smartphones. It took time - six years, from the launch of the first iPhone - and it may be too late to save the company that makes it. But the BlackBerry deserves to be taken seriously again.

Why? Because the new BlackBerry Q10 is a successful marriage of the modern touch-screen smartphone and the iconic BlackBerry keyboard.

Though it can be hard to remember, the keyboard used to be a standard feature on smartphones, before the iPhone wiped our minds with its vision of touch-screen Utopia.

Since then, keyboards have been disappearing from smartphones. Physical keyboards just didn't fit into the design mold set by the iPhone. Palm Inc. created a credible, innovative smartphone with a physical keyboard, but it was a slide-out version, which made the keyboard seem like a burden and an afterthought. There have also been Android phones with physical keyboards, but they haven't been very good, and they've mostly disappeared.

Meanwhile, BlackBerry has continued to make well-designed phones with physical keyboards. But until now, it hasn't gotten the software running them quite right. Even with physical keyboards, modern phones need touch screens to control movies, games and other tasks beyond the BlackBerry's roots in messaging. BlackBerry has experimented with touch screens, but has been partly hamstrung by the pre-touch foundations of its operating system.

After numerous delays, BlackBerry finally came out with a modern operating system this year, the BlackBerry 10 . The company considers it crucial to its future, as the BlackBerry seeks to recapture relevance lost to the iPhone and Android devices.

RIM's first phone with the new software, the BlackBerry Z10 , is a touch-only device. With the Q10, we really get to see how it works with a keyboard.

On BlackBerrys, the keyboard has always been about more than filling in text fields, and the new operating system takes that further. If you want to send a tweet about what you're eating for lunch, just pick up the phone, unlock it and type "tweet Turkey sandwich again today." Hit Enter, and now the world knows about your boring fare before you've even had a bite.

Just as you can on some older BlackBerrys, you can also launch applications by typing. If you want to play "Angry Birds," instead of flicking through screens to look for the icon, you can just start typing "Ang" and the game icon pops up. Again, that's fast.

The keyboard is handy for music, too. If you're in the apps screen, just start typing the name of the song or artist you're looking for, and up it comes.

I haven't used a keyboard-equipped phone in years, but the Q10 makes it very tempting. There's no getting around it: it's a faster, more accurate way to type, even compared with innovations such as Swype, which lets you "type" by swiping your finger from letter to letter.

The keyboard eats up space that could be devoted to a bigger screen, of course. But BlackBerry has saved some space by eliminating the big buttons that resided between the screen and the keyboard on older BlackBerrys. This results in a larger, square screen. It's very sharp and colorful, too. To some extent, the screen compensates for its small size with a high resolution, which allows it to present a lot of information, as long as you're willing to hold it close and read small type.

U.S. phone companies haven't yet said when they'll sell the Q10, but expect it by the end of May for about $250 with a two-year contract. It's coming to BlackBerry's home country of Canada on May 1.

The BlackBerry 10 software made its debut a few months ago on the touch-only Z10. The new operating system is a welcome change, not just for BlackBerry users. It's very quick to get around the phone, and it seldom leaves me baffled the way many incarnations of Android do. It's laser-focused on giving you access to email, texts and other means of communication, as opposed to music, movies and games.

One of the coolest features is the "peek." From any application, you can swipe your thumb up from the bottom of the screen, then right, to slide the application slightly off the screen. That reveals the messaging "Hub," which gathers your communications. At a glance, you can see which accounts have new messages. If you want, you can slide the app farther to the right, getting you into the Hub to read and write. Swipe left, and you're back to where you were.

The interface takes time to get used to, and it doesn't have the simple immediacy of the iPhone. But once you learn it, you can positively zip between tasks.

The downside to the new operating system is its relative dearth of third-party software. There are applications for Facebook, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. A Skype app out will be out soon. But there isn't any app for Netflix, Amazon or eBay. There are no Google apps, either. The selection of games is particularly poor. There's only one incarnation of "Angry Birds," and that's "Star Wars."

I also encountered one glitch while using the Q10 for a few days: I was unable to type my response to one email. Leaving it and going back into it did not help until the next day. That's the kind of problem that's going to frustrate BlackBerry users, so I hope it's a rare one, and one the company fixes soon with a software update.

That aside, the Q10 is likely to be attractive to the BlackBerry faithful. It deserves to lure some people over from Androids and iPhones as well. The keyboard makes the Q10 a good complement to a tablet. Use the bigger screen for entertainment, surfing and gaming, and the BlackBerry for messaging.

When I reviewed the Z10 model in January, I found I couldn't point to anything about it that would make me say: "Forget those other phones: you have to buy this one." I can for the Q10. If you value a keyboard, this is the one to get.

BlackBerry Q10

BlackBerry Q10 now up for pre-orders in Canada

Associated Press, April 10, 2013

The maker of the BlackBerry phone said Tuesday that a modern smartphone with a physical keyboard will be available in Canada in the coming weeks as major wireless companies started taking advance orders.

Details on when the BlackBerry Q10 will go on sale elsewhere will be announced soon, Research In Motion Ltd. said. Advance orders are already being accepted in the UK.

The BlackBerry, pioneered in 1999, had been the dominant smartphone for on-the-go business people and other consumers before the iPhone debuted in 2007 and showed that phones can handle much more than email and phone calls. RIM faced numerous delays modernizing its operating system with the BlackBerry 10 (Review). During that time, it had to cut more than 5,000 jobs and saw shareholder wealth decline by more than $70 billion.

RIM surprised Wall Street last month by returning to profitability and shipping about 1 million touch-screen BlackBerry Z10  phones in the most recent quarter, which ended March 2. It will take several quarters, though, to know whether RIM is on a path toward a successful turnaround. RIM had just entered the critical U.S. market with the Z10 phone, and the more anticipated Q10 keyboard phone won't be on sale until late May or June because of testing by U.S. wireless companies.

The U.S. delay in selling the new keyboard BlackBerry complicates RIM's efforts to hang on to customers tempted by Apple's iPhone and a range of devices running Google Inc.'s Android operating system. Even as the BlackBerry has fallen behind rivals in recent years, many BlackBerry users have stayed loyal because they prefer a physical keyboard over the touch screen found on the iPhone and most Android devices. The temptations to switch grow with each additional delay, despite favorable reviews for BlackBerry 10 operating system.

Canadian carriers Rogers Communications Inc. and Telus Corp. both said Tuesday that advance orders are under way for the keyboard Q10 device, but neither would provide an exact date for when the Q10 would be available. Telus is offering the phone one a $199 with a three-year service agreement or $700 without a contract.

The all-touch-screen Z10 launched in Canada and other markets earlier this year and in the United States last month.