Facebook's Stupid Phone Idea

Nick Bilton reporting for the New York Times:

The company has already hired more than half a dozen former Apple software and hardware engineers who worked on the iPhone, and one who worked on the iPad, the employees and those briefed on the plans said.

And why it's a bad idea...

Henry Blodget for Business Insider:

Facebook knows absolutely nothing about making, selling, or supporting hardware. Really--nothing. Yes, Facebook could use its billions to buy RIM or Nokia, and then it would know something about hardware. But RIM and Nokia are deeply troubled companies that are already cratering. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to buy, integrate, and FIX RIM or Nokia? (Google's about to give us a case study in how difficult it is with Motorola).

Facebook, poaching Apple's employee will not make you the number 1 technology company, and neither will it make you the next Apple. As Henry highlighted, sure, everyone wants to be the next Apple - Amazon, Google and everyone else, but there's only one Apple right now and it is by far the best Apple. Facebook's dreams of becoming the next Apple are disillusioned and Facebook should,really, just stick to mobile apps. They make money and the users are happy. Think about it. If the majority of the Facebook users now are already unwillingly to use Facebook if Facebook starts charging money for it, what are the odds they're going to buy a Facebook phone?

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Has RIM Missed the Tablet Market?

I think by now, everyone understands how quickly the technology market moves. In the time it takes for someone to decide on a mobile device or tablet and then go ahead and purchase the product, the markets will have moved on. I will use a quick example here, I know someone who has recently purchased a HTC Sensation XE. This is an excellent phone and offers some decent specs including its 1.5 GHz dual-core processor however there has been confirmation that HTC will soon be showing off a range of new devices at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona. The one that comes to mind for me is the upcoming HTC Zeta which has a beautiful design and some breathtaking specs. It will be running Android 4.0 Ice-cream sandwich and will be one of the first devices to come pre-installed with it. I think more breathtaking than that is the fact that it will be sporting a 2.5 GHz Quad-Core processor offering a real powerful punch, but I think I am getting off topic.

I want to look closely at the Blackberry Playbook which was first launched by Research in Motion last April but immediately had problems. The playbook launched with its own operating system called Blackberry tablet OS based upon the QNX Neutrino kernel. The problem here was that the system was very slugglish and at times I found it to be completely unresponsive or attempting to the complete opposite of what you were trying to achieve. There were concerns about the operating system from day one though, there were many comments made that the operating system crashed completely and criticism soon emerged suggesting that RIM had launched the device too early without testing it.

The other major criticism for the launch of the playbook came after users found that it came with no email client or calendar. This was very surprising for a company that works around productivity and business and the battery life saw in come in at second from bottom compared to other tablet devices around that time. The final nail in the coffin for RIM at launch was the price was over priced for an unfinished tablet that did not appear to be anywhere in the same league as its rivals such as the Motorola Xoom or the iPad 2.

We move a few months down the line to yesterday when the announcement came that Research in Motion would be releasing a software update for the playbook called 2.0. This would certainly fix most of the problems that the playbook started with and added features that should have been available at launch. This includes a native email client and a calendar application. It now also sees an update for documents to go and print to go and allows IT managers bring in Blackberry fusion.

There also comes an update for Blackberry Bridge allowing users of the playbook to make it communicate with blackberry phones and allows them to become remotes for the tablet device. The question that must be asked now though is this too late to allow RIM to continue making decent sales figures from the playbook? I think that Blackberry Tablet OS 2.0 is aimed primarily at users who already own the playbook rather than trying to get new users because lets be honest, the playbook has pretty much lost the attention of consumers now. The market is pretty much commanded these days between Honeycomb and iOS with many companies producing android tablets and Apple continuing their march against rivals.

It is an excellent decision for RIM to finally add these features to allow those who forked out the money for the device to get some use out of it yet I think its a lost cause in getting new users interested. If RIM are looking to gain the attention of consumers once more I think the correct thing to do is start from the bottom up and scrap the playbook completely.

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BlackBerry Employees Threatened Over London Riots

Hackers have made it clear to RIM BlackBerry that releasing details about the London Riots to the authorities will result in them 'regretting it'.

BlackBerry Messenger, the private group messaging service installed on all BB devices has been widely accused as one of the triggering pieces of tech helping to enflame the London Riots. The service has boomed with popularity as unlike Twitter and Facebook all the messages sent are private. The media or Police can't do a quick Google search to find out what people are saying and where it's all going down. A group calling themselves 'Team Poison' would rather RIM kept it that way.

The hack appeared briefly on the company blog: blogs.blackberry.com reading “Dear Rim; You Will _NOT_ assist the UK Police because if u do innocent members of the public who were at the wrong place at the wrong time and owned a blackberry will get charged for no reason at all”. The hackers claim to hold information about RIM employees and are prepared to publish them online. They continued “if u assist the police, we _WILL_ make this information public and pass it onto rioters…. do you really want a bunch of angry youths on your employees doorsteps? Think about it…. and don’t think that the police will protect your employees, the police can’t protect themselves let alone protect others”.

This comes after BlackBerry released a statement claiming the company is “engaged with the authorities to assist in any way we can”. I'm sure that the Police would love that to mean giving them a feed of all BB Messages, in reality I doubt it will be anything like that.

Other social networks seem to mainly being used for good. The @riotcleaup twitter profile and riotcleanup.co.uk have been helping people find local areas to meet up and help with the clean up operation after last night. The majority of people seem to be disgusted by the actions taking place. Maybe I'm just not following all the hooligans though. 

@techByJack

BlackBerry PlayBook Review

This is my full review of RIM's first tablet and iPad competitor, the BlackBerry PlayBook. Specs for the device include a 7-inch touchscreen (1024x600), 1GHz dual core processor, 1GB RAM, 3MP front-facing camera, 5MP rear-facing camera with 1080p video recording and a full Adobe Flash 10.1 supported browser. Available storage capacities include 16GB, 32GB and 64GB models. Starting price for the BlackBerry PlayBook is $499.

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The World that Forgot About BlackBerry

In the midst of the new tablet rush, I completely forgot about RIM and when I came home today to see that they had released a tablet, I was stunned. Let me just start off by saying that I am completely blown away by the Blackberry Playbook. When I read the specs, I found out that this thing was a monster. A tablet packing a dual-core processor? Jeez. Two HD cameras, HDMI out, and much more. I think RIM made the right choice by waiting to enter the tablet market, because they just took features everyone wanted in the iPad, and put it in their product. And that new Blackberry Tablet OS, it looks great.

For people like me who don't want the size of the iPad, but also do not want a horrible Android tablet, this product is going to be a huge hit. I personally decided that if it is affordable for me, I will purchase one. I hope RIM releases more hands-on videos with the Playbook soon, and that when the SDK comes out in a couple weeks, developers flood in and create some high-quality applications that will be ready come launch in early 2011. So do you think that this could be an iPad killer? I personally do not think it will "kill" the iPad, but it will add some good competition in the tablet market. Let me know what you think.