The
Blackberry Developer Conferencethat opens
later today is already a success, having doubled the number of
delegates from last year.
Speaking ahead of today's keynote announcement at the
Blackberry Developer
Conference, which will take an unusual three hours to deliver,
Research in Motion (RIM) sources said sales to its traditional
enterprise users had held up well in the recession. However, sales
to consumers had yet to take off: "We're at the bottom of the
hockey stick (graph of sales growth)," said one delegate.
The question observers are asking is, how much will that change
the Blackberry's nature? To answer that question, almost all of
RIM's top brass are in San Francisco this week.
It is likely that RIM will pursue its present course of going
both up and down market in terms of device functionality, say
observers.
A RIM source said consumers were keen to buy the most
function-rich devices on the market, essentially for bragging
rights. This also made high-end devices attractive for C-level
executives, he noted.
Firms still battling the recession were unlikely to buy such
devices for general staff, but they still wanted them to have
connectivity and robust applications in cheaper packages, a RIM
source said.
This was being reflected in the sales figures, he said. Cheaper
units like the 8520 Curve were very popular as standard issue
devices, but the new touch screen devices were finding a niche
among executives and people who might otherwise buy an iPhone or
Android phone.
Computer Weekly spoke to software testers who said consumers
were starting to suffer from "app fatigue". One said Apple's App
Store might have 100,000 applications, but the vast majority were
never downloaded.
Observers noted that RIM is likely to push applications such as
video, music and "always-on" connections to social networking
applications such as Twitter and Facebook.
But business users will be more interested to know what
alliances RIM will announce with key enterprise vendors,
particularly those who deliver supply chain applications.
2009 Blackberry Developer
Conference