RIM - SlashGear

‘RIM’ Stories

Best Buy slash PlayBook to sub-$200

Chris Davies, Nov 20th 2011 Discuss [23]

Best Buy has slashed pricing of the BlackBerry PlayBook, with the entry-level model down to under two hundred dollars as retailers attempt to provoke interest in RIM's little-loved slate. The 16GB PlayBook is now just $199.99, with the 32GB and 64GB models at $299.99 and, bizarrely, $229.99 respectively. Read The Full Story

Blackberry Playbook to go on sale for holidays

Shane McGlaun, Nov 18th 2011 Discuss [4]

RIM hasn't found the success that it expected with the Playbook tablet in any way shape or form. I think most will agree that would be because the tablet was overpriced for the machine to lack the basic features that tablets are expected to have today. HP has been trying to sell its failed TouchPad tablet at a discounted price of $149 for a while via some resellers. Read The Full Story

Android gobbles half of Q3 smartphone market

Chris Davies, Nov 15th 2011 Discuss [4]

Android‘s rise continues, with the platform now running on over half of all smartphone sales in Q3 2011, and well ahead of iOS’ 15-percent smartphone market share. Samsung grabbed smartphone vendor top-spot, according to Gartner‘s figures, while Apple shipped 17m iPhones – up 21-percent annually but down almost 3m units from Q2 2011, which the analyst firm puts down to iPhone 5 hype and anticipation – and saw its market share dip year-on-year.

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BlackBerry Bold 9790 and Curve 9380 official

Chris Davies, Nov 15th 2011 Discuss [0]

RIM has announced its two latest BlackBerry 7 smartphones, the Bold 9790 and Curve 9380, the latter being the first Curve to use an all-touch design. Set to go on sale "in the coming weeks" the two phones each have NFC support; the Bold 9790 pairs a 1GHz processor with a touchscreen and QWERTY keyboard, along with 8GB of integrated storage and a microSD card slot. Read The Full Story

RIM’s first BlackBerry QNX smartphone surfaces

Rue Liu, Nov 14th 2011 Discuss [15]

What's purported to be a snapshot of RIM's very first BlackBerry with the company's new QNX-based OS, also now known as BBX, has emerged. The handset is codenamed "London" and is scheduled for release sometime in June of 2012. The source of the image also revealed the specs for this all-touchscreen device that's certainly cosmetically a huge departure from RIM's traditional BlackBerry styling. Read The Full Story

Windows Phone overtakes RIM in developer interest

Chris Davies, Nov 14th 2011 Discuss [9]

Windows Phone 7 has apparently overtaken RIM's BlackBerry OS to be the third most interesting platform for app developers, according to new research, with Microsoft's partnership with Nokia a key driving factor. Apple's iOS remains in the top spot for developer attention, Appcelerator's Q4 2011 report suggests, with 91-percent of those coders questioned reporting that they were "very interested" in creating iPhone apps; in contrast, 38-percent said the same about Windows Phone 7, with 28-percent saying they were keen to code for the Nokia Lumia 800 in particular. Read The Full Story

Adobe yanks Flash Smart TV strategy but RIM won’t let go

Chris Davies, Nov 10th 2011 Discuss [1]

Adobe isn't just axing Flash Player for Mobile, but refocusing its approach toward smart TV as well, pushing native apps rather than Flash compatibility. Although the company will continue to support existing licensees of its Open Screen Project, an Adobe spokesperson told GigaOM, it now believes "the right approach to deliver content on televisions is through applications, not a web browsing experience." Meanwhile, RIM has confirmed that it will independently develop Flash for the BlackBerry PlayBook, telling AllThingsD that it has licensed Adobe's source code. Read The Full Story

Google cuts Gmail app support from BlackBerry

Chris Burns, Nov 9th 2011 Discuss [3]

It was announced this week that Google will officially stop support for the native Gmail app for BlackBerry devices starting on November 22nd, this move effectively telling RIM that it'll have to rely on its in-browser iteration if it plans on getting any kind of future support officially. Does this mean that Google has given up on trying to reach people through BlackBerry? I'd say yes, but Google seems to be announcing the change carefully so as not to upset those who've already got the app working on their devices - Google, do you see BlackBerry's end of life in your scopes? Read The Full Story

RIM’s first BBX phones to mimic PlayBook display, support BES

Chris Davies, Nov 9th 2011 Discuss [1]

RIM's BBX-based next gen smartphones will squeeze PlayBook resolution displays into pocket-scale form factors, the company has confirmed, promising 1024 x 600, 16:9 handsets. RIM VP of developer relations and ecosystem development Alec Saunders told PCMag that developers who produced apps for the BlackBerry PlayBook could also be confident that it would run on the company's first BBX smartphones, expected in the new year. However, there are suggestions that alternative screen sizes and resolutions are also in the pipeline. Read The Full Story

comScore: Android still way ahead, but Apple now grabs 10% US market share

Rue Liu, Nov 4th 2011 Discuss [26]

Research firm comScore has just released a US smartphone market report for the period ending in September 2011, revealing as expected that Android is still way ahead of the pack, but that Apple continues to grow steadily. In fact, one in ten mobile subscribers in the US now own an iPhone and this is even before Apple released the iPhone 4S. Read The Full Story

IDC confirms Apple now surpassed by Samsung in smartphones

Rue Liu, Nov 3rd 2011 Discuss [4]

Research firm IDC has issued new data today further confirming recent reports that Samsung has overtaken Apple in worldwide smartphone shipments. Samsung is said to have shipped 23.6 million smartphones during the summer, which puts it in the lead with a 20 percent share of the global smartphone market. The wait and anticipation for the iPhone 4S drove Apple's iPhone shipments down to second place. Read The Full Story

RIM’s stock drops 68%, falls below book value

Rue Liu, Nov 3rd 2011 Discuss [4]

The makers of the BlackBerry, Research In Motion (RIM), had a very tough year. It's been steadily losing business and customer loyalty, struggling through technology problems and eroding investor faith. And now the company is facing a 68 percent drop in stock value this year, with its book value now worth less than the net value of its property, such as patents and other assets. Read The Full Story