In an effort to reverse its decline and improve its fortunes, Research In Motion will introduce 2,000 prototype devices running its latest operating system at the company’s annual BlackBerry Jam in Orlando, Fla., in May.
The Waterloo, Canada-based manufacturer, which pioneered the market for messaging on-the-go, revealed that the devices will be available to developers in an interview with Bloomberg news Friday.
‘Tangible Evidence of Progress’
Alec Saunders, RIM’s vice president of developer relations, told Bloomberg the move is a “huge step forward on our path to eventually launching BB10. It’s tangible evidence of the company making progress to finally shipping the device.”
The announcement comes as more bad news arrived in the form of Apple beating RIM on its own turf: Bloomberg and market research firm IDC found that 2.85 million iPhones were shipped to Canada in 2011, compared with 2.08 million BlackBerry phones. That’s a first since the iPhone was released in 2007.
According to figures from Gartner, BlackBerry OS devices represented 11.7 percent of the global smartphone market in the second quarter of 2011, trailing behind Apple iOS with 18.2 percent, Nokia’s Symbian at 22.1 percent and Google’s Android, the king at 43.4 percent. In 2010, RIM was No. 2 behind Symbian with 18.7 percent, as the Android revolution was gathering steam.
To get back on top, RIM’s coming BlackBerry 10 operating system will need to take huge strides, said analyst Gerry Purdy of Mobiletrax. He said the QNX system the company acquired in 2010 and has begun to integrate as BlackBerry 10 is an excellent opportunity, as it has done well in tablet form in the RIM PlayBook.
“They have been suffering from a process of transition longer than they expected and certainly much longer than they wanted,” Purdy said.
That means, he said, there is no margin for error, particularly…
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