by Jason Wilk on January 19, 2009
- RIM has released official images of their Blackberry application center, the Blackberry Storefront. RIM is yet another mobile manufacturer who thinks a standard platform that allows third-party developers in to sell applications is going to solve everything for the company. Palm has just released their plans of having a platform for third party developers, Android already has theirs (with paid apps coming soon), and several others are planned to be released this year.
- Research In Motion is looking to launch their store in the next 6 weeks, and it took a major step forward when it started accepting applications from app writers to be included in the launch. Blackberry has a few apps already, but have been widely disliked thus far. Apps like Facebook for the Blackberry aren’t nearly as intuitive and functional as they are on the iPhone.
- Some worry that because of the Blackberry lineup of phones, some developers will be turned off. The Storm’s ‘half-push, half-touch’ screen make it difficult to mimic games already popular for some developers on the iPhone who are interested in testing out another platform. Also, the Blackberry Curve and Bold both have standard non-touch QWERTY keyboards with scroll balls, another turnoff for potential developers not only for non-compatibility, but overall lack of intuitiveness. Apple is currently King of app developers and sales. They just passed the 500 million app download mark this past week. RIM will be succesfful if they can recruit 1/3 of the amount of developers using iPhone’s SDK. They are off to a decent start however, offering a special VC fund to help find developers and grow apps for its platform.
- Do you think other manufacturer’s can compete with Apple in the standard platform market? Does RIM stand a chance with their phone lineup? I think Android Market will be the only real competitor to Apple’s store and that RIM doesn’t stand a chance beyond the no-brainer apps you expect to see on their phones.
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by Jason Wilk on January 4, 2009
- Palm is expecting to launch back into stardom with the launch of their latest phone this week at the CES conference in Las Vegas. The new phone, which many claim to be competitive with the iPhone (yawn, heard that before), is running Palm’s brand new Nova operating system. This will be Palm’s big push into a standardized platform which will allow third-party developers to submit applications. The above photo is a mock-up from CrunchGear, and PalmDoc based on the widespread rumor that the phone will have a slide-down QWERTY keyboard.
Updated Screenshots Here
- CEO, Ed Colligan, who’s watched Palm’s stock price fall off Mt.Everest this year, is putting all his chips in on this new operating system. He says they have been working incredibly hard on the new technology and it is already getting “amazing” reviews from those who have been able to play around with it. Personally, I feel that standardization is not going to be the kicker to push any of the phone manufacturers over the top. The golden days of the OEM’s were when the decks were fully controlled by them and the carriers (i.e $$$).
- Look out for the official Palm announcement this Thursday. We’ll see if it can’t give that stock price a little nudge.
Updated Screenshots Here
by David Heyerman on December 2, 2008
- Nokia just announced their new smart phone handset, the N97.
- Although not as thin as most of it’s competitors, the N97 boasts a 3.5″ tilting touch screen along with a QWERTY keyboard, and 32GB of memory.
- Jonas Geust, the VP heading up the Nokia Nseries line claims that “the Nokia N97 is the most powerful, multi-sensory mobile computer in existence.” …sounds routine.
- Scoble, who got a chance to play around with the phone claims the Facebook experience on the Nokia to be far superior to the iPhone. Depending on how you feel about Scoble, you can take the statement for truth or with a grain of salt. I’ll take extra salt.
- In other news today, Nokia announced that they’ve acquired software company, Symbian Limited, who they’ve been working with since back when the S60 was being developed. This isn’t a huge surprise as they already owned a decent portion of Symbian’s shares…..now they own them all.
- I’m near positive the N97 won’t come close to the iPhone, but will it give the G1 or the Storm a run for it’s money?
Nokia, Mash, CG, Scbl, E, EM
by David Heyerman on November 29, 2008
- Sick of having the same phone as everyone else? Nokia just launched their beta site, Nokia Build, allowing users to customize the look of their 7310 series phone with stock and customizable templates.
- I tried it for about 5 minutes, user interface very clean and easy to use….gonna stick with the iPhone though….sorry Nokia.
Mashable, Nokia Build
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