RIM unveils new BlackBerry OS

Traditional developers are unlikely to be pleased with the move

Research in Motion (RIM) revealed details of BlackBerry's new operating system, named BBX, at its developers' conference in San Francisco this week.

BBX will be based on the QNX platform that currently operates the BlackBerry Playbook tablet. QNX was originally developed by a Canadian company called QNX Software Systems, but was acquired by RIM in April 2010.

It is expected that the next version of the BlackBerry Playbook will be released with the BBX operating system and that the operating system will appear on smartphones at a later date. No specific timelines have been released by RIM.

"With nearly five million BlackBerry apps downloaded daily, our customers have made Blackberry one of the most profitable platforms for developers," said Mike Lazaridis, president and co-CEO at RIM.

"We're giving developers the tools they need to build richer applications and we're providing direction on how to best develop their smartphone and tablet apps as the Blackberry and QNX platforms converge into our next-generation BBX platform,"he added.

However, Ovum analyst Jan Dawson highlights that traditional Blackberry OS developers, who develop in Java, are unlikely to be receptive to the announcement of a new development environment.

"With BBX, RIM is rebuilding the foundation for all of its devices, including the iconic handhelds, and BBX begins to show some real promise in that sphere, with potential for a much more powerful, immersive and media-friendly platform," said Dawson.

"However, the adoption of QNX across the entire line in the coming months and years also means that RIM is leaving its traditional BlackBerry developers high and dry. There simply is no migration path for existing developers, short of starting from scratch with an entirely new development environment," he added.

RIM also outlined that developers will now be able to use Native SDK, an open-source development code, when writing applications for the Blackberry Playbook.

Native SDK allows developers to build high-performance, multi-threaded, native C/C++ applications.

It is intended that this will be extended to be compatible with BBX-based tablets and smartphones in the future.

However, Ovum's Dawson also indicates that the inclusion of SDK is unlikely to gain traction from developers initially, due to it currently only being made available on Blackberry's tablet.

Blackberry's Playbook has not achieved widespread market penetration, unlike its smartphones, and developers are unlikely to want to create applications for a small audience.

"The native SDK is a big step forward in allowing developers to create applications that are truly optimised for these devices and which take advantage of all the hardware capabilities," said Dawson.

"The range of options for development, including those already announced, will be appealing to developers, but they only respond to part of the challenge for developers. The main challenge remains giving developers an audience and a market for their applications, which doesn't exist today in the case of BBX.

"As long as it remains a tablet-only operating system, developer appeal will be limited, and with BBX-based handhelds some time off still, many developers won't feel a pressing need to develop for BBX in the near term," he added.

"In the meantime, the platform risks suffering from the same chicken and egg problem as many others – users won't buy a device without any apps, and developers won't develop for a platform without any users."