Research in Motion unveiled Tuesday morning the new BlackBerry 10 phone and operating system that the company hopes will be its salvation, in a form that looked quite rough around the edges. Among the features missing on the prototype phones given to software developers was the ability to actually make phone calls or access wireless networks.
With the phones, which RIM said would not be sold to consumers until late this year, the company will attempt to regain market share lost to Apple's iPhone and phones that use Google's Android operating system. Although the new phone is clearly a work in progress, the company is handing out about 2,000 of what it calls "alpha" versions to developers attending a company-sponsored conference in Orlando, Fla.
While the remarkably unfinished state of the phones may add to RIM's reputation for delivering products behind schedule and incomplete, Alec Saunders, the company's vice president of developer relations, said it was necessary to get a "very, very stripped down" version out to developers now to avoid a more serious problem later.
"The reason why we're doing this - which is unprecedented for us and it's quite uncommon in the industry - is because we want to create a wave of application support behind the new BlackBerrys before we bring them to market," Mr. Saunders said in an interview on Friday at a RIM office here where much of the new operating system was developed. "If we launch without applications, well, it will be slow."
Apps have became an important selling point for smartphones since Apple opened its App Store. But current BlackBerry handsets have lagged well behind iPhones and Android phones in both the quantity and quality of apps available for them. The new BlackBerry 10 operating system will allow developers to create much more sophisticated BlackBerry apps, provided that RIM can persuade them that it is worth their while.
Outwardly, the prototype phones appear ready for sale even down to their packaging. They resemble a shrunken version of the BlackBerry PlayBook, RIM's tablet computer, which uses a variation of the new operating system. The phone's 4.2-inch, high-resolution display is much larger than the 3.5-inch display of the current iPhone 4S but smaller than the largest Android phone, the Samsung Galaxy Note, which offers 5.3 inches. It is longer and wider than the iPhone to accommodate the larger display, but the matte black body of the prototype phone has about the same thickness.
The phone has two microphones on the bottom which, Mr. Saunders said, will enable it to improve voice quality on calls (when, of course, the software that will make calls possible becomes available later this year).
Noticeably absent is RIM's signature keyboard. Indeed, there is not a single button on the face of the phone.
The incompleteness of the phone only becomes apparent when it is switched on. Most notably, it is still missing the on-screen interface that will be offered to consumers, which Mr. Saunders said developers would see this summer. A simplified version of the PlayBook's user interface is currently standing in. The phone shown by Mr. Saunders contained very few apps as well.
Mr. Saunders said that the new phone has a dual-core processor and chips for improved graphics, although he declined to give their specifications. And, indeed, he acknowledged that developers would probably find the performance of the prototypes wanting.
"To be quite candid, this hardware is a little bit pokey," he said adding that the prototypes will not offer the same battery life as the final version of the phones. "It's not going to be super great, because all of the optimization that needs to be done in software in order to get the best power characteristics has not yet been done."
RIM decided to release early versions of the phone, which are being specially made in a small factory near RIM's head office in Waterloo, Ontario, because of its experience giving developers free PlayBooks, Mr. Saunders said. Since that program started in October, RIM has handed out about 17,000 tablets. Mr. Saunders said those giveaways, while costly, helped increase the number of PlayBook applications to about 20,000 during the last quarter from just 5,000 in the previous quarter.
Along with the phones, RIM will also be giving developers software tools for creating BlackBerry 10 apps in three different software formats.
Mike Abramsky, who recently left RBC Capital Markets where he covered RIM as an analyst for a decade, said that giving prototype phones to developers is probably a good idea, but will not guarantee success for the BlackBerry 10 phones.
"They're not being stupid; they're doing everything they can," Mr. Abramsky said. "But this is about the challenges of being late to the game. They're trying to run upstairs when the escalator is running in the other direction at an increasing pace."
Like other analysts, Mr. Abramsky agreed with Mr. Saunders that having a full array of attractive apps will be important for the new phone.
The collapse of BlackBerry's market share in the United States is not helping RIM attract or keep the interest of some developers.
Alex Quilici, the chief executive of YouMail, announced in April that his company would stop updating the BlackBerry version of its visual voice mail program because of a decline in interest, concentrating instead on iPhone and Android versions.
Mr. Quilici said he was in no hurry to move into BlackBerry 10. "If BB10 starts showing some real success, we'll take a look," he said.
But Refresh Mobile, a British company that builds apps and software for creating apps under the Mippin brand name, has, partly at RIM's request, already started work on about 10 apps for the new operating system.
BlackBerry sales have not collapsed in Britain, a factor that played a role in Mippin's continued interest, Nick Barnett, the company's chief executive, acknowledged. But he said that BlackBerry 10 includes many attractive features, including integration with social media sites.
"It's actually quite nice," he said.
To date, Mr. Barnett said, Mippin's clients, which are largely British publishers, have not expressed much interest in apps for BlackBerry 10 phones. But he added that this was not surprising.
"Until a device hits the dealers and somebody in the office has one, it's not something they consider," he said.
© 2012, The New York Times News Service