Last month, BlackBerry caused a lot of commotion in the tech word when it announced that BBM would be coming to Android and iOS this summer. The popular messaging app has always been exclusive to BlackBerry.
The Canadian-based handset maker didn't offer up any further details at the time on when the app would be available on the two platforms. But according to T-Mobile UK, it's going to be landing on them later this month...
As expected, the Pentagon has finally approved Apple's iPhone and iPad devices for use on the United States military networks, Bloomberg learned Friday. The clearance sets the stage for Apple to compete with Samsung and BlackBerry for military sales. According to the report, the Defense Department today approved the use of Apple’s portable products running the iOS 6 software...
If you've been looking to enjoy BlackBerry's upcoming Messenger app on your iPad, bad news. Blackberry’s software portfolio chief Vivek Bhardwaj tells Trusted Reviews that the app will only target the iPhone and Android smartphones, at least initially. Although he wouldn't ruled out the possibility of an iPad edition down the road, he didn't specifically mention it either.
That's hardly surprising given BlackBerry's lackluster PlayBook tablet and the firm's general failure in the tablet space, though it's hard to escape the feeling that BlackBerry Messenger for iPad would make sense for the business types who've come to depend on their Apple tablet for work...
Just days after rival research firm Gartner released quarterly sales for iOS and Android, rival IDC today announced similar numbers for shipments of smartphones. Combined, iOS and Android maintained their stranglehold on the smartphone market, accounting for more than an astounding 92 percent of shipments during the first quarter of 2013.
In a surprising move, shipments of the Windows Phone smartphone operating system surpassed the BlackBerry OS, putting Microsoft in third place behind Android and iOS. I bet you didn't see that one coming...
In a better-late-than-never announcement, Canada-based BlackBerry today posted a surprising announcement confirming it will be bringing its BlackBerry Messenger platform to Apple's iOS and Google's Android platform. Yes, BlackBerry's killer app won't be exclusive anymore.
BlackBerry's move comes amid consolidation in the instant messaging space. Two increasingly popular services, Viber and WhatsApp, recently passed 200 million users each.
With iMessage pretty much ruling the messaging game on iOS devices and Google's rumored unified chatting platform dubbed Babel expected soon, it is no surprise that BlackBerry Messenger will be available to mobile users who don't use BlackBerry devices...
A new report is out this afternoon, claiming the US Department of Defense is going to grant security approvals for Samsung's Galaxy smartphones, as well as Apple's iPhones and iPads running iOS 6 in the coming weeks.
The move is separate from the mobile device implementation plan that the Pentagon announced back in February, and could pave the way for Apple to gain more notable influence in the hard-to-reach government sector...
BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins said the following in a recent interview:
In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore. Maybe a big screen in your workspace, but not a tablet as such. Tablets themselves are not a good business model.
But of course, what would BlackBerry know about a good business model?
Finally, a survey appears where BlackBerry is leading the big guys. On a twist of the usual polling of which device consumers want to buy, one research firm asked what smartphone would you not be caught dead using. The BlackBerry "crushed" the competition in the 'don't want' department. In fact, 71.4 percent of consumers polled by Raymond James said no feature would get them to use a BlackBerry.
Basic math tells us this corresponds to nearly three out of each four respondents. Additionally, nearly twenty percent said you couldn't give them an iPhone, or one out of each five. And, just over thirty percent replied they'd never touch a smartphone powered by Google's Android, or approximately one out of each three...
In the latest sign of the importance apps play in smartphone adoption, more than thirteen billion downloads were recorded during the first three months of 2013, according to a Monday report.
The survey of the four leading app stores also found Apple, Google and others earned $2.2 billion from apps, an eleven percent increase over the final quarter of 2012.
Whereas Apple leads in terms of revenue - and by a large margin, too - Google's Play Store, thanks to a large installed base of Android devices, has the upper hand in terms of download count. Specifically, the App Store collected 74 percent of the revenue of top app stores, while Google Play led registered 51 percent of apps obtained...
It looks as if BlackBerry, formerly know as Research in Motion, has managed to generate some respectable buzz around its brand new mobile operating system called BlackBerry 10. The Canadian mobile manufacturer has sold one million of its all-new BlackBerry Z10 smartphones which run the latest software and reported a fourth quarter profit of $98 million, the first positive earnings in quite a while.
I wouldn't write off BlackBerry yet and if you've been wondering what all the fuss is about, the company has written a nice web app which lets you preview some of the key features of BlackBerry 10 right on your iPhone or Android device. Just fire up Safari on your iPhone and go to BlackBerry.com/glimpse for, well, a glimpse of BlackBerry 10...
Research firm comScore today released a comprehensive report on mobile landscape in the United States and elsewhere and one particular chart stands out as another example of how the smartphone market is a duopoly between iOS and Android, with Apple and Samsung increasingly taking industry's profits at the expense of - well, pretty much every other handset maker out there.
Spanning 2005-2012, the chart paints an accurate picture of platform dynamics when it comes to the competitive market for connected mobile devices...
Following Apple marketing boss Phil Schiller's anti-Android comments on the eve of Galaxy S 4 launch and Apple's new 'Why iPhone' web campaign, the CEO of BlackBerry has unsurprisingly launched a critique of Apple's handset and its user interface, referring to the the fact that iOS now 5+ years old.
In his view, Apple is being out-innovated by others, right up to the point where the Cupertino company could get replaced "pretty quickly". Of course, BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins, like every other handset vendor in the ferociously competitive mobile market, is really drumming up his own platform by arguing that the iPhone is an old hat. Be that as it may, I'd choose my words carefully if I were Heins.
The struggling handset maker's market share and capitalization have all but evaporated because of the iPhone and now stand in the single-digit range and below the $8 billion mark, respectively. That's how much investors thought the entire BlackBerry biz was worth Monday morning. Now, contrast Blackberry's market cap to Apple's first-quarter net profit of $13.06 billion...