With BlackBerry Live coming up this week, PamFax publisher PamConsult has put out a special offer for BlackBerry Live and BlackBerry Jam Americas attendees.

I will be attending many of the sessions; I have already installed the event program on my BlackBerry Z10.

During the event I will have business cards, as shown on the right, with the redemption code to get up to 22 free fax pages¹ using PamFax for BlackBerry 10 (or on any other platform which PamFax supports).

PamConsult wants you to actually experience its obligation-free ability to fax to over 180 countries worldwide in five or six easy steps using your BlackBerry 10 (or PlayBook). And they want your feedback on the experience.

More details here. Note that this offer is limited to the earlier of 500 redemptions or June 30, 2013. The QR code on the right will take you to the application in BlackBerry World.

If you’re attending BlackBerry Live, look me up. I’m one of the taller people there, wearing glasses and a bald spot amongst the grey hairs.

¹Actual redemption is for €2.00 (~US$2.60) of PamFax credit; number of free pages depends on termination country.

Full disclosure: I have been involved in the beta testing of PamFax from time-to-time since its launch in late 2007. The main goal of this promotion is to determine the interest level in having a fax solution available as one additional communications mode on the BlackBerry 10, beyond email, BBM, SMS (text) messaging, Twitter, Facebook and Linked In. Certainly the volume of faxes currently managed by PamFax demonstrates there is still a significant need for faxing documents.

While I have an affiliate account it is not, as of this writing, linked to this promotion. PamFax’s main financial benefit to me to date is to have reduced my fax costs by replacing a costly fax telephone line at a fraction of the line cost. It’s there when I need it (and I seldom get spam faxes).

A much anticipated highlight will be the Tuesday morning keynote speeches where we expect to learn more about the future direction of BlackBerry’s offerings.

Here’s my speculation, based on both my own career exposure to multi-tasking and mobile computing combined with my understanding of BlackBerry’s unique QNX technology:

Recently BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins commented how we may not be seeing a tablet in five years’ time while at the same time seeking out a value-added mobile computing ecosystem built around a smart phone. In my previous post, BlackBerry: A Smartphone Manifesto, I concluded with:

What runs through the back of my mind as my BlackBerry 10 experience builds is how I am carrying, in that little black “slab”, a computer that, when combined with an communications ecosystem, makes it many times more powerful than the IBM mainframes I ran for complex research and industrial applications many years ago. Add the input and output hardware appropriate to the user’s environment and needs and you have a powerful mobile computing device that becomes central to managing all your activities.

Think of mobile computing platforms as extensions to, and resources for, our overall neural functioning.

It has caused some questions on various forums that I follow and caused me to reflect on how we are moving towards a world where a smartphone can serve as the centerpiece for not only all our mobile computing needs but also, in context, appropriate information delivery system.

Some past history leading up to this conclusion:

• Multi-tasking PC’s and devices are in my blood; they made me a lot of money during my active career in technology sales, marketing and business development activities.
• During my last years at Quarterdeck, we offered a network supported multi-tasking environment called DESQview/X, employing the X Windows protocol connecting local PC’s, acting as an X terminal, to both local and remote applications over “TCP/IP”.
  • Yes, the concept of client and server in X Windows is backwards relative to our normal concept of these terms. Although still in use in some applications, somehow the concept of data packets, websites and web browsing and the more efficient Internet took over.

• In the fall of 1996 a client sent me to Oracle’s annual partner event where Larry Ellison was promoting the concept of “dumb client” terminals connected via the Internet to remote data base servers for all our information processing activities. It was played down as impractical at the time …. I forget the terminology Oracle used … but there was something about software blades. Whatever the initial terminology was, it eventually evolved into Oracle’s cloud.
• While attending ceBit 2007 the initial implementation of “glass” as a display surface was demonstrated where television broadcasts could be viewed on bathroom mirrors.
• We have also seen Microsoft’s demonstrations of “surface computing” technology using tabletops (not associated with their “tablet” devices).
• Paris has boulevard information boards that are essentially large screen displays where you use “touch” to find, say, appropriate restaurants, museums or other tourist attractions as well as Metro subway route information.

In my recent post I mentioned a couple of other trends:

• the rise of cloud-based computing:
  • providing access to content, entertainment and databases anywhere on any device
  • check out Martin Geddes: The cloud is a socio-economic revolution
• new, open system, developer tools such as HTML5 that simplify application development
  • while improving overall performance
• the evolution of the M2M (machine to machine) “Internet of things”
• use of NFC protocol to enable information exchange, whether transactions or content

Where does this lead to with respect to the “death of the tablet”?  More importantly, where can BlackBerry come up with a value-add business opportunity by building out its “mobile computing platform” around a smartphone?

A recent video, A Day Made of Glass, demonstrates how important the evolution of glass technology supporting displays has become; it also gives a very good overview of why the world will be migrating to one of smartphones, displays (of any size), keyboards, wireless Internet connections and printers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk146eGRUtI

Yet what is the secure, robust and scalable operating system already in place that can support this concept?

• multi-tasking
• multi-processors
• robustness through using microkernels that make it both highly secure and crash resistant
• support for NFC and other industry standard wireless protocols
• the fastest smartphone web browser
• no device drivers required

Bottom line: Coming back to my previous conclusion, enhanced through the concepts in the video, I envision a world five years from now where we walk into an office, home, Internet cafe, library, airport lounge or other environment carrying a handset smartphone.

On entering the smartphone  simply connects wirelessly, with appropriate security, to peripheral hardware such as  display, keyboard and printer. The (BlackBerry) smartphone acts as the arbitrator of all our activities and content. Yes, the tablet form factor is one display option but without the need for built-in intelligence and proprietary application ecosystems.

My one concern: what will be put in place to ensure optimum battery life conditions?

Looking forward to listening to Tuesday’s keynote session at BlackBerry Live 2013. (Live streaming will be available.) One outcome of Heins’ statement is certain; there will certainly be lots of media and blogger attention.

Thanks to Frank O’Kelly on the BlackBerry Business LinkedIn forum for bringing this video to my attention.

Full disclosure: The author is attending BlackBerry Live 2013 as a guest of the BlackBerry Elite program. Other than a non-disclosure agreement regarding confidential information, no conditions have been placed on any coverage I may provide of the event. At the time of authoring this post, I had no proprietary information regarding BlackBerry’s future direction but rather simply my own past experience.

The author has a small holding of BlackBerry shares. But he also has iOS and Android devices in order to experience a cross section of the smartphone and tablet market. These observations are based on publicly available information combined with his own past business experience at senior management levels in high technology markets. His main interest is in seeing several thousand jobs maintained in not only the Canadian economy but also in BlackBerry organizations around the world.

Given that RIM stock has been somewhat volatile for the past few months I can only say check with your investment advisor before taking any action. These posts are for information purposes only.

With the evolution of the Internet, including its email and online storage solutions, the need for sending and receiving documents using faxes has declined. Yet there are still several hundred million fax end points out there.

While your fax usage has probably declined over the past few years, there come times when a faxed document addresses a specific need. And you need a handy way to send and/or receive a fax at minimal costs. PamFax for BlackBerry 10 and PlayBook provides the handy, obligation-free, on demand solution to send and receive faxes worldwide at a very low cost. Check out the five or six simple steps to sending a fax using PamFax:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEDsULMqSyg

PamFax has no monthly cost and no subscription requirements for sending faxes to over 180 countries; no credit card is required to sign up. For 32 countries it also provides an inbound fax number. It supports sending documents in over 100 formats from a scanner, smartphone camera, local files and online storage services such as DropBox, Box, Google Drive and SkyDrive. With a PamFax number you can also receive faxes, at a fraction of the cost of a dedicated phone line, directly to a folder of any of these online storage services.

Your PamFax activity is managed through the personalized PamFax Portal; your PamFax account can be accessed on Windows, Mac or Linux PC;s as well as on iOS and Android devices.

With PamFax for BlackBerry 10 or PlayBook you can do as I did – throw out your fax phone line and its associated costs. While sending faxes has no minimum usage requirement or costs, a PamFax inbound line does have a $8.25 per month charge on a one year subscription that includes sending 20 fax pages per month.

Using the BlackBerry 10 camera or a scanning program such as Paper Pusher Scanner, combined with PamFax, the BlackBerry 10 is the only fax hardware device and “fax line” connection you need. And it’s totally mobile, allowing you to send and receive faxes not only at the home office but also at hotels, airports, Internet cafes, restaurants or wherever you have Internet access.

Sign up now and send up to three (3) free trial pages.

Disclosure: this post does contain affiliate links.

To tablet, or not to tablet, that is the question:
Whether ’tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Competition,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
The Tablet-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks
That Flesh is heir to? ‘Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to Dream;

With apologies to William Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Yesterday BlackBerry CEO, Thorsten Heins, in an interview on Bloomberg, mentioned that he felt tablets would be passé in five years. He also mentioned that the only platform you will need will be your smartphone. Of course it has generated controversy across the Internet with posts ranging from how that concept could lead to BlackBerry’s demise, given the potential sales volumes, to how BlackBerry is focusing on making visionary market leading business decisions built around their unique mobile platform technology. He has hinted previously that he would need to see a unique business case for any new tablet device.

Yet he dreams of a smartphone-centric mobile computing world. Quoting from the Bloomberg article linked above:

Heins said in a January interview he’ll only consider a PlayBook successor if it can be profitable. He reiterated yesterday that a BlackBerry tablet has to offer a unique proposition in a crowded market.

“In five years, I see BlackBerry to be the absolute leader in mobile computing — that’s what we’re aiming for,” Heins said. “I want to gain as much market share as I can, but not by being a copycat.”

For the past ten weeks I have been using the BlackBerry Z10 and come to appreciate both its power and its potential. “Did I say it was fast?”. That’s actually been the most challenging aspect of using the device – getting accustomed to how fast gesturing, predictive text and the Hub, amongst other features, contribute to a very smooth operation in a real world environment.

But not only do I not waste time waiting for applications to re-open or for spinning clocks, it has become apparent, through using it in practice for many applications, how powerful a device BlackBerry 10, running on the QNX/BB10 OS can become. A few examples:

• hooked it up to my TV panel to watch Argo
  • downloaded from BlackBerry World
  • just prior to winning Best Picture at the Academy Awards
• made a Power Point presentation using it as a controller for my PlayBook hooked up to a display projector
• show friends pictures from our Costa Rica trip on the TV panel
• access all my messaging through the Hub,
  • which is continuously running in background
  • includes Twitter, SMS, Facebook and LinkedIn
  • also easily access upcoming Calendar events
• followed the NHL and Major League Baseball activity as games progressed
  • also use it as a reference source for game summaries, standings and replays
  • watched portions of a few games, including while away from a WiFi environment
• Hands-free calling from my car via Bluetooth connection
• Follow Twitter on a unique and powerful application
• used BlackBerry Messenger’s video for a virtual hospital visit that saved the need for family members to drive about 50 km through rush hour traffic
• access all my pictures via DropBox
• pull up all my critical documents via DropBox or SkyDrive
• browse to many “applications” via their mobile websites (post to follow)
• send and receive faxes (via PamFax) with no phone line or other hardware
• viewed and edited Office documents: spreadsheets, presentations and text documents
• managed WordPress activity
• listen to music services and/or radio stations worldwide
• read newspapers online
• and the list goes on….

I have also had years of experience working with various form factors for intelligent devices, ranging from SlingBox to PBX’s and routers. Physically they can be almost handheld size yet deliver on intelligent performance. I have experienced tablets from Apple, Samsung and BlackBerry.

Over the past couple of weeks I came to realize how powerful a QNX-based device with a smartphone form factor could be. It has the potential to become a full computing platform.

Take a look at the trends:

• the rise of cloud-based computing:
  • providing access to content, entertainment and databases anywhere on any device
  • check out Martin Geddes: The cloud is a socio-economic revolution
• WiFi everywhere as the stealth carrier
• more powerful mobile processors such as the quad core Snap Dragon processors
  • demonstrated at the 2013 CES keynote
  • including how they can support the most intensive game applications
• QNX’s inherent support for secure, scalable and robust multitasking and multi-processing
• hardware and software support for 1080p video and beyond
• the evolution of IP-based communications,
  • including the emergence of WebRTC for “call me anytime” voice and video calling
  • support for superwideband audio
• use of NFC protocol to enable payments
• new, open system, developer tools such as HTML5 that simplify application development
  • while improving overall performance
• the evolution of the M2M (machine to machine) “Internet of things”

I can envision a world where we simply carry around a smartphone with a handheld form factor but as we move about:

• connect to any display panel via either HDMI or a DLNA certified device
  • ranging in size from Playbook’s 7 inch screen to 100 inch meeting room displays
  • available in your home, automobile, Internet cafés, libraries and business friendly locations
• connect to a keyboard via Bluetooth or use the smartphone’s physical keyboard
• connect to the Internet via WiFi or whatever high speed carrier technology is available
• access printers remotely at the end point where paper documents are required

Bottom line: What runs through the back of my mind as my BlackBerry 10 experience builds is how I am carrying, in that little black “slab”, a computer that, when combined with an communications ecosystem, makes it many times more powerful than the IBM mainframes I ran for complex research and industrial applications many years ago. Add the input and output hardware appropriate to the user’s environment and needs and you have a powerful mobile computing device that becomes central to managing all your activities.

Think of mobile computing platforms as extensions to, and resources for, our overall neural functioning.

As Andy Ung at Seeking Alpha states in “BlackBerry: Understanding QNX”:

As smartphones pack stronger processors and become more powerful, the main use of mobile devices will no longer be to make phone calls. BlackBerry is envisioning a future of mobile computing, where distinguishing between computers and smartphones becomes increasingly difficult. From anywhere around the world, in the portability of your pocket, a full-blown computer will be at your access.

We look forward to BlackBerry’s announcement(s) at BlackBerry Live in two weeks: Will it be:

• More powerful smartphones?
• A new platform that launches BlackBerry into the M2M market?, or
• Another unique value proposition built around smartphones and the BlackBerry 10 platform?

How will BlackBerry “take Arms against a Sea of troubles, And by opposing end them”?

Aye, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal tablet,
Must give us pause.

BlackBerry issued a statement late yesterday:

The comments that Thorsten made yesterday are in line with previous comments he has made about the future of mobile computing overall, and the possibilities that come with a platform like BlackBerry 10. We continue to evaluate our tablet strategy, but we are not making any shifts in that strategy in the short term. When we do have information about our PlayBook strategy, we will share it.

One final comment: many reports talk about PlayBook as a failed device. Yes, they may have sold 200,000 a year ago but in their most recent quarterly report they sold 370,000 units. Not an iPad killer but I find many of my acquaintances who have one could not do without. It remains my primary tablet device, largely for email, browsing on a larger display and viewing videos.

Other posts reflecting on Heins’ statement re tablets:

• Chris Umiastowski, CrackBerry.com: I highly doubt Thorsten Heins thinks the tablet market will die
• Erica Ogg, GigaOm: By 2018, tablets will be obsolete, says legacy smartphone company CEO
• John Paczkowski, AllThingsD: BlackBerry’s Heins: Tablets Are Just Temporary in Mobile Evolution
• Larry Dignan, ZDNet: BlackBerry chief questions tablet category: Maybe he’s not wrong

Full disclosure: the author has a small holding of BlackBerry shares. But he also has iOS and Android devices in order to experience a cross section of the smartphone and tablet market. These observations are based on publicly available information combined with his own past business experience at senior management levels in high technology markets. His main interest is in seeing several thousand jobs maintained in not only the Canadian economy but also in BlackBerry organizations around the world.

Given that RIM stock has been somewhat volatile for the past few months I can only say check with your investment advisor before taking any action. These posts are for information purposes only.

Blaq for BlackBerry PlayBook

However, earlier this week we learned where its developer team, Kisai Labs, has been focusing their resources when they announced the release of Blaq for BlackBerry 10. It is one entrancing and seductive Twitter application that goes way beyond the standard Twitter client on the BlackBerry 10.

Some criteria for a Twitter app include:

• Follow multiple Twitter accounts
• Real time stream of the Twitter feed
• Ability to Reply, Retweet, “Favorite” a tweet
  • access to the URL for a Tweet
• Access to the Twitter profile of a user:
  • Follow/Unfollow a user
  • Send direct messages
  • Learn about the users Twitter ecosystem (Follower, Following, tweet count, website link)
• Display on one screen tweet threads involving multiple replies
• Search for a user’s tweets and/or all references to a user
• Access to Saved Searches, Lists

In addition one wants the application to be “fast”, responsive to every touch or gesture, and easy, almost intuitive, to use.

Blaq for BlackBerry 10 is a native BlackBerry 10 app that has been developed “from the ground-up” using all the features available to developers. Features include:

• Support for two Twitter accounts (more to come in updates)
• Main feed streaming in real time – with very fast scrolling (did someone say “keep moving”?)
• A very interesting timeline bar at the top shows a “secondary” time where the tweets on your screen are in time relative to the current time
  • tap on the timeline bar to go to most recent tweets

• Most comprehensive use of the gesturing engine native to BlackBerry 10:
  • Swipe on the timeline feed to the right and you get a menu covering Twitter feed, responses, direct messages, lists and favourites
    • also access to Search and Mute features as well as your own Twitter account information
  • Swipe an individual tweet to the left, followed by up or down to select reply, retweet, “favorite” and other action from the right sidebar
  • Gesture the entire feed down and it rubber bands to update
    • very fast scrolling through the feed
  • Swipe down from the top for the application menu (Accounts, Settings, Help)
• A tweet detail screen that has not only reply, retweet (including RT with edit), “favorite” and “options” icons.
  • It also will show a full conversation thread if appropriate.
• Share from almost any application to Blaq via the Share screen
• Access to Saved searches (as set up in your Twitter account on a browser)
• On minimizing, Blaq goes into a low power mode to conserve battery
• A short, but complete, reference Help file to provide initial training on the gestures available

Let’s have a look at some screenshots (click on image, then click on right side of light box for “Next”, left side for “Previous”):

Bottom line: Blaq for BlackBerry 10 has quickly become my preferred Twitter app, not only for its feature set but also for its overall speed and ease of navigation. I can rapidly scroll through my timeline, access an entire thread and not only Search but also access Saved Searches. Obtaining information about a user is easily available along with access to their tweets, Followers and Followed lists as well as any URL link on their user profile.

Beyond becoming my preferred Twitter app, Blaq for BlackBerry 10 is a prime example of exploiting a wide range of BlackBerry 10 features, its underlying real time multi-tasking and its accompanying developer toolkits. Cascades UI , Share screens, amongst other tools, along with its overall speed and snappiness contribute to its uniqueness and rich user feature set. It makes very effective use of the screen real estate available while easily navigating amongst its features. While it supports the Q10′s 720 x 720 display, it is one application where having the larger 1280 x 720 display of the Z10 is advantageous. In summary, it enhances BlackBerry 10′s primary perception as a communications-focused smartphone.

It’s well worth the $2.99 introductory price; initial reports indicate it has become one of BlackBerry World’s most downloaded BlackBerry 10 applications.

However, even according to their own information, there are enhancements coming. I would like to see:

• support for landscape mode (especially for pictures and videos)
• support for more than two accounts
• Ability to Save a Search (currently sees searches saved via the Twitter web page)
• Ability to build Lists.

One final caveat: Our one hope has to be that Blaq will be able to continue its functioning at a time when Twitter itself is trying to de-emphasize applications for the mobile web.

During my experience on a management team restructuring a NASDAQ-listed company I had a real life baptism into the role of news releases, analysts and stock prices. And it was not pretty.

Background: In the summer of 1994 I was relocated to my employer’s Head Office in Santa Monica, California to participate on an interim management team tasked with the restructuring of a utility software publishing company. The company was experiencing declining revenue and earnings. It had been the leading vendor of utilities for Microsoft’s DOS operating system; two awards in my office can attest to that. Upgrade releases would see up to 60% of users updating their software (in the pre-Internet age of using direct marketing for upgrades).

But the company had also acquired rights to software supporting the emerging Internet. In fact we tried to launch a web browser, based on a license obtained from the University of Illinois. But, due to previous “hard line” intellectual property experiences, we did not understand the culture of the Internet when it comes to beta testing of new software. First to use an online beta program, Netscape took over that market space; later, under the leadership of Alec Saunders (yes, that Alec Saunders who is now Vice-President, Developer Relations at BlackBerry) as Internet Explorer Product Manager, Microsoft offered Internet Explorer as an operating system feature, not a product. With no revenue model left on the table our web browser, while having some features not duplicated in today’s browsers for about ten years, went into decline.

But during that time, as Internet Business Development Director, I had set up partnering agreements with the major Internet Service Providers of the day (PSI Net, UUNet, AT&T, Netcom and others) and had been involved with a press release that actually lifted our stock price by about 12% on the issuance day. Basically we would get a royalty for every user of our software who signed up with one of these ISP’s.

And it’s here that I learned about the fragility of being a public market company and its sometimes unfounded exposure to the whims of analysts.

Within two quarters we had returned the company to profitability; it remained profitable for another four or five quarters. At some point early in that period the press release went out. During that entire period the share price rise was “meteoric”; analysts were looking at every press release issued and rejigging their forecasts. Make an acquisition of a company with no proven revenue stream; issue a press release; the share price went up. Over that year period the share price went from around $5 to over $35 within a year.

While the press release related to my activity mentioned a potential revenue model built into those agreements, we had no real market experience with the model. Some analysts were calling our CFO for more information; beyond forecasts for our expanding line of market-tested utility software products, we had no real data to work on. Any forecast would have been purely speculative; in the long run I think it brought in about $50,000. (The company was eventually sold to Symantec for a product that overcame an intellectual property issue Symantec was having.)

Over that time period I realized that analysts want to jump on any information tidbits to see if they can out-forecast the company’s actual internal projections. We had internal spreadsheets and were tracking our distribution channels weekly for inventory movement of our utility software products through distributors to retailers. For most of those quarters we actually managed our quarter end shipments to meet our goals and left backlog for shipment in the following quarter. There was an element of misalignment between analyst projections and business performance.

We knew exactly how much existing product was moving through the channels. But there was no data upon which to base any forecasts on our new business partnering activities. Yet, analysts put out some reports that were purely speculative as to the revenue impact. Our share price would rise with little basis on the business’s actual performance.

In today’s BlackBerry environment we are seeing its stock price whipped around on every analyst report and news release. When it was announced that the service revenue model was changing over the following couple of years, some analysts wanted to wash out service revenue immediately. In after hours trading share price dropped minute-by-minute as analysts rushed to outdo each other on their spreadsheets during the press conference.  As we saw in the last quarter, service revenue only fell 3% as BlackBerry gradually launches new services while demand for the legacy service is slowly falling away. Subsequently other analysts have come out with new “Buy” recommendations, often based on attempts to forecast BlackBerry 10 revenues.

But here’s what perplexes me. Analysts have no history to run on for BlackBerry 10 sales. Encouragement for sales comes from potential renewal of the 76 million BlackBerry user  contracts over the next two years and having 650 carrier relationships, of which over 200 are now carrying or will soon be carrying BlackBerry Z10 and Q10. It was interesting to learn that 55% of the first month’s sales were coming from previous iPhone and Android users. But there’s no long term history from which any reasonable forecast for BlackBerry 10 units can be generated. Internally BlackBerry will have sales goals but there is no regulatory requirement that they be made public.

So, as a proxy, some analysts run out to their local retailers and try to extrapolate stories from a small number of stores giving feedback. Others will try to get component order information from suppliers. Yet, given BlackBerry management’s track record for turning around the company, tracking sell through on a, say, weekly basis has to be one of the key metrics followed internally. It would be much more accurate than any sampling visits by third parties to retail locations is going to provide. We do know they ramped up production in late February to meet the existing demand.

And then Thursday one analyst who has a history of bearishness puts out a report claiming that returns are higher than sales. And the share price tanks, potentially to the benefit of those holding short positions in the stock. But there is no research published to describe their methodology. And more importantly any revenue forecast by any analyst at this point is purely speculative. What this particular analyst has done is demeaning to the term “research”; to achieve my accreditation as a physicist, I had to provide substantial peer reviewed research backing up my conclusions. The price continued to decline through the day in spite of an early statement from BlackBerry.

Analysts are playing a short term game when BlackBerry is in a long term restructuring and rebranding process. As I have said previously with $2.9 billion in cash, 76 million current users and 650 carrier relationships (their distribution channel), they are in a start up position that most entrepreneurs can only dream about.

In the end it’s about the user experience. Many reviews have been positive. From my own perspective, as one who has sold multi-tasking for a large portion of my career, my summary statement is “Did I say it was fast?” Yes, there are going to be a few who just don’t get its unique features and will want to make a return. BlackBerry’s statement claims their return levels are in line with industry norms. They have, and have acknowledged, some initial teething issues that are gradually being addressed. They have the real time sell through data (or better have it); only BlackBerry’s internally collected numbers give the real picture.

Out of all this maybe the analysts need to take a regulator enforced holiday from covering BlackBerry until there are two or three quarters of results to work with. In the meantime, I consider any revenue forecasts to be purely speculative with no basis in fact. At times the stock market becomes a game of speculation whereas shareholders want to be rewarded on their investment for real business performance, based on real numbers.

BlackBerry has certainly had enough of this speculation. And the one report yesterday crossed the line when it comes to being an analyst with any integrity. BlackBerry has finally hit back from a legal perspective. As Chris Umiastowski at CrackBerry.com says, in What’s really going on with Detwiler’s false accusations, and how BlackBerry is handling it beautifully:

When somebody publishes incredibly negative information on a stock, like Detwiler did, and refuses to discuss their research with the company either ahead of time or after the fact, and that “research” doesn’t even pass the smell test and turns out to be totally wrong, it definitely raises eyebrows.

Good on BlackBerry for going after stuff like this.  Nice to see their new Chief Legal Officer, Steve Zipperstein, taking action.

Read Chris’ post (linked above); it gives an excellent perspective from the viewpoint of a former analyst.

Bottom line: any forecast of BlackBerry revenues will remain speculative for another two or three quarters. Fortunately they have an established customer base and distribution channel to work with. Their new management team has evolved an employee culture that is motivated to succeed. But they still need to not only market heavily; they need more users who can pass along their experiences. By their management’s own admission they are still in the launch phase of delivering not only new smartphone experiences but also integrating into their traditional enterprise base.  And we need to hope there are viral effects for which the outcome cannot be reliably predicted.

Sorry analysts, I’ll continue to be very skeptical of your reports, for any stock, not just BBRY.

Full disclosure: the author has a small holding of BlackBerry shares. But he also has iOS and Android devices in order to experience a cross section of the smartphone and tablet market. These observations are based on publicly available information combined with his own past business experience at senior management levels in high technology markets. His main interest is in seeing several thousand jobs maintained in not only the Canadian economy but also in BlackBerry organizations around the world.

Given that RIM stock has been somewhat volatile for the past few months I can only say check with your investment adviser before taking any action. These posts are for information purposes only.

But with today’s Internet-enabled communications it’s feasible to want that communications device to go well beyond making voice calls to include support for video calls, listening to a far-off classical radio station, monitoring a broadcast sports event, such as a golf tournament or a soccer match, or watching a YouTube video.

Would a device that:

• does not use the processor and memory resources of your PC,
• delivers stereo audio,
• holds your iPad (any version),
• runs Skype, Bria, Truphone and other communications software,
• delivers Internet radio,
• lets you watch YouTube and make video calls
• includes a standard telephone handset and
• provides fast charging of your iPad
• sets you iPad display at a viewing angle convenient for watching video

be a suitable replacement for that legacy desktop phone?

Portability of tablets is one of their primary features. However, when using it in your office, it would be convenient to mount it on a desktop at an appropriate viewing angle to easily follow, say, videos, movies and television events. Listening to music or Internet-based radio broadcasts, in stereo, would also be an option for office activity.

Of course the other activity carried out on a desktop is carrying on voice (and now video) conversations. At times the privacy of a handset is appropriate; at other times you may need a speakerphone so that everyone near your desktop can participate in a conversation. If the conversation supports superwideband HD audio, such as Skype’s SILK technology, one wants the full audio crispness associated with this technology.

At CES 2013, Tecom, a manufacturer of OEM VoIP phones, introduced its MOCET Communicator desktop platform for the iPad with features such as:

• Support for use with all iPad models from the launch model to the recently introduced “iPad 4”
• HD handset and cradle
• Stereo speakers and external microphone
• Support for superwideband audio
• One touch buttons for volume control, speakerphone, mute
• Bluetooth connectivity for external audio sources such as a smartphone
• Ideal office desktop platform for voice and video calling using Skype, Bria, Facetime and other IP-based communications applications
• Display viewing angle adjustable from 30° to 75°

Over the past few months I have been using the MOCET Communicator to:

• Place and receive Skype voice and video calls
• Listen to radio stations (local and remote via their iPad applications)
• Watch sports events – baseball, hockey, soccer, tennis (using Rogers Anywhere Live)
• Watch YouTube videos, especially where music is the content
• Receive Rogers One Number calls (made to my mobile but answered on a PC, tablet or smartphone)
• Read books on Kindle

In order to confirm they work I have also checked out:

• Bria for iPad – a business communications client
• Truphone – another communications offering (involving roaming SIM’s)
• HookFlash – an iPad communications application in beta
• News videos on CNN, BBC and CTV News amongst others

For text typing in social networking applications, the iPad continues to work with a Bluetooth keyboard.

Bottom line: I have found the MOCET Communicator turns my iPad into a convenient companion to my PC desktop PC activity, often offloading many of the activities outlined above from using my desktop PC’s resources. The audio quality is excellent. When not using it for communications activities, it becomes my office radio; occasionally it also becomes an office “TV set” for watching live sports and news events. Yet I can make and receive voice and video calls, using the handset for privacy or using the speakerphone for hands free conversations involving others around a table in the office.

And a major plus: it turns the iPad into a flexible desktop audio/video appliance, taking a smaller footprint than a full PC while providing display of video at a comfortable viewing angle. Having it always charged while in the stand removes one significant cause for delay or interruption of activity while using the iPad in the office.

For Small to Medium Businesses there are more features:

As I don’t have a small business operation I asked Marc Abrams, MOCET’s VP Product and Business Development, about its capability to natively support SIP-based calling  within a local or hosted PBX environment. Using the free IP Commander iPad application additional service provider options become available. The MOCET Communicator …

…. is a great solution for a remote office with hosted IP services like RingCentral or 8×8 or with an SIP IP PBX whether local or remote. This provides a professional business solution for the SMB user who needs to be able to transfer calls and work with the rest of the users in the enterprise.

At US$229.00, available in the U.S. on Amazon, and elsewhere by contacting MOCET directly, it is one communications device option worth investigating for both its convenience and audio performance.

2 billion minutes infographic by Skype

With Skype clients on PC’s, smartphones (iOS, Android, Windows Phone and soon to include BlackBerry 10), tablets, including Kindle Fire, and an emerging offering of Internet-enabled TV’s as well as the current migration of Windows Live Messenger to Skype, it’s bound to continue the growth.

Recent data from Hudson Barton’s Skype Statistics shows that recently as many as 55 million were online concurrently. This number is only an indicator but certainly supports the trending upwards as well.

Bottom line: the numbers speak for themselves.

Of note:

• Sales of one million Z10’s are only up to the quarter end, March 2, 2013. They do not include any shipments from the “one million unit” order or provide any indication of U.S. sales where the Z10 just launched this past week.
• 55% of carrier sales to end users were to customers who mostly migrated from other devices (according to a Bloomberg interview with Heins this was roughly an even split between iOS and Android). A real surprise; can it continue? Twitter comments and some reviews seem to suggest “yes”.
• Gross margins rose to 40%: a positive indicator but the real gross margin on BlackBerry 10 devices will not become fully apparent until next quarter’s report. However this increase  is testament not only to a contribution from Z10 sales but also to the internal restructuring of manufacturing and supplier relationships.
• Cash remains strong at $2.9B; combined with clearing up their income tax situation, it points to strong financial (and inventory) management.
• 350,000 PlayBooks were sold with little, if any, marketing. (And I still use mine as a larger display email and web browser device; it will be a significant advance when it simply gets its version of the BB10 operating system)
• While revenue was essentially the same as last quarter, subscriber base dropped during what was really the first transitional quarter to the new BB10 devices. With any degree of success for both the Z10 and Q10, this should be the low point in the subscriber base.
• And, most surprisingly, BlackBerry reported a profit. They were break even on operations with the profit coming from resolving income tax issues.

Based on my own past experience with a similar but less complex recovery several years ago, I would also note:

• Focus: the new management team triaged and defined the priorities with the result that, at the moment, there is total focus on the Z10 and Q10 launch. Yes there is no BB10 for PlayBook but that is not the recovery generating product. Mention has been made of new products later this year but one expects R& D efforts to continue in order to remain competitive.
• Culture: CEO Heins said it best when he stated: “We’re seeing a new attitude and cultural shift in the company where we look to innovate faster and [ask] how to operate more efficiently”. In my own limited dealings with BlackBerry personnel I have noticed a significant shift in attitude; gone is the arrogance; there is a much less hesitance and a much more confident and proactive “how can we help you?” attitude.
• Employees and managers now have defined responsibilities and goals. An important component of the cultural change. Been there; experienced that in the past.
• Introducing product methodically, in measured steps: The gradual worldwide rollout of BlackBerry 10 was a very smart move. Launch first in a market where there was not significant loss of market share (U.K); do the second launch in the Canadian market which can serve as a proxy for a U.S. launch as much as to deliver to the home country market; launch in east Asian markets where BlackBerry remains a major player. This progression provides time and feedback to get the initial hiccups out of the system, gather customer experience reactions and fine tune manufacturing, distribution and support operations prior to both the U.S. launch and the Q10 launch.
• Initially launching a device with the Z10’s unique touch keyboard experience was often pictured as a negative but this was a risk taken that has largely been a success. While everyone wants to think the traditional BlackBerry market only wants a physical keyboard, using the touch keyboard has created many converts who realize that a uniquely new touch keyboard user experience overcomes preconceptions  and changes the game, especially for a device whose primary function is “text-based.” communications.
• Ramp up manufacturing; it appears that demand has outstripped supply but that also indicates prudent management of inventory and the distribution channel. Determining initial build volumes had to be one of the more difficult challenges of the launch process; wrong guesses can play havoc with the balance sheet. Pre-orders by carriers had to help as one indicator. But until you actually experience real consumer demand, it’s a crap shoot.
• Managing the channel inventory. I have seen too many instances of “pushing” product out the door on the last day of a quarter resulting in mismatch of end user demand and distributor channel inventory. All in an effort to meet stock market expectations. In all cases it was counter-productive and came back to bite.  In BlackBerry’s case inventory levels and sell through reports seem to indicate that there was only enough product sitting on retailers’ shelves at quarter end to meet end user demand over the ensuing few weeks¹. As a former sales executive it would be interesting to know their backlog but that’s not required public information.
• Taking control of the message. For several quarters the company formerly known as RIM had let the media take control of the message, often sounding a death knell. But following the Annual General Meeting last July, CEO Thorsten Heins, accompanied by a his new Chief Marketing Officer, commenced reaching out to provide interviews with the media demonstrating both candor and reality with respect to BlackBerry’s position as a company and the current market environment. He set expectations and restored credibility. Eventually media got the message that BlackBerry was sticking to the QNX Operating System and  preparing a mobile computing device that would provide a new user experience.
• Applications: BlackBerry Z10 launched with 70,000 applications, increasing to 100,000 in time for the U.S. launch. We continue to see more of the popular apps arriving; last week we were told to watch for CNN, The Daily Show Headlines, eMusic, Maxim, MTV News, Pageonce, PGA, Rdio, Skype, Soundhound and Viber amongst others. Kindle, Wall Street Journal, eBay, MLB.com at Bat 2013, CBS Sports and WhatsApp are recent arrivals. It will take the combination of user adoption and developer recognition of the unique features of the BB10 OS and its toolkits, with onging support from BlackBerry’s developer evangelism program,  to build on this base. In six months to a year there I expect will be few complaints about the apps available.

A key point made yesterday; this is only the beginning. QNX and the BB10 OS provide a unique platform for a variety of new mobile computing experiences, not only for smartphones, but also for a range of other devices in the automotive, healthcare and other markets. The next quarter will continue to be a transitional quarter but provide a better picture of BlackBerry’s turnaround. The track record of the new executive team bodes well to date for turning around and managing the overall business but some interesting challenges remain.

Der Speigel started out its report on the earnings with “Totgesagte leben länger” or “the ‘said to be dead’ lives longer”. With this earnings report BlackBerry is now demonstrating that it has a long life expectancy. Credit must be given to all the employees who maintained their optimism and enthusiasm through the “worst of times”, the loyalty of the BlackBerry fan base and, finally, the new executive team for its leadership in making it all happen.

As for those shorting their BlackBerry shares, have a good weekend. And analysts will continue to be all over the map for revenue forecasts; there simply is not enough history to be able to make accurate forecasts.

Check out CrackBerry.com’s Chris Umiastowski’s more detailed thoughts on the results: Thorsten Heins brings BlackBerry back in black.

¹One of my most memorable occasions was when I could tell our somewhat feisty production manager he could go home at five o’clock on the last day of a quarter as we had shipped to our internal goals. Previous quarters meant he was working until midnight on the last day.

Full disclosure: the author has a small holding of BlackBerry shares. But he also has iOS and Android devices in order to experience a cross section of the smartphone and tablet market. These observations are based on publicly available information combined with his own past business experience at senior management levels in high technology markets. His main interest is in seeing several thousand jobs maintained in not only the Canadian economy but also in BlackBerry organizations around the world.

Given that RIM stock has been somewhat volatile for the past few months since I started drafting this series I can only say check with your investment advisor before taking any action. These posts are for information purposes only.

Related articles

• ‘We have now increased our production capacity.’ – BlackBerry CEO, Thorsten Heins (crackberry.com)

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• Kevin O’Leary dumps his iPhone for the BlackBerry Z10 (crackberry.com)

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This post is the continuation of a series that started out as “BlackBerry 10, First Impressions“. But as I get more experience I am changing the title to “BlackBerry 10 “Did I Say It Was Fast?”. After all, if Microsoft can confuse us with the various names it gives to Windows, I can in full conscious change the name of my series in the context of my evolving experience with the BlackBerry 10. And there are many aspects of the BlackBerry 10′s inherent design that contribute to its overall speed. This time there are more examples of how the smart touch keyboard accelerates my smartphone activities.

Now that I have had five weeks’ experience using my BlackberryZ10, I see that the touch keyboard is learning what words and phrases I type often. But two sequences are worth special note. In both cases they make it much easier to enter the content of any messages involving this website and the eBook, Experience Skype to the Max (see top of the right sidebar for more information and to purchase).

First, building an SMS message that I might send related to this website. Click on the image to start a walkthrough by keystrokes; clicking on the right side of each image rapidly almost emulates the true user experience as the message is built up. Also note the guiding text beneath each image.

Next, let’s walk through the keystrokes for a message related to the eBook:

In total 189 characters in 87 keystrokes, almost a 60% reduction in keystrokes required to build these messages  And no spelling or URL errors!

Two examples demonstrating how each individual user’s Z10 will be building over time a customized lexicon of her/his commonly used words and phrases; in these cases mine had memorized:

• my most commonly used URL’s
• the title of this blog, and
• the title of my book

In addition these examples demonstrate how the BlackBerry Z 10′s inherent lexicon picks up on and combines “a catalog of a given language’s words (its wordstock), and a grammar, a system of rules which allow for the combination of those words into meaningful sentences”. While not shown here, it has also memorized a short form of my name used at the end of my emails. Type a capital “B” and it suggests BlackBerry over the “L” (surprise!).

Often when entering an email field in the web browser it will come up with the suggestion of my email address. One click email address entry. Definitely a very intelligent mobile communications device.

Bottom Line: The Z10′s touch keyboard is one more reason I ask “Did I say it was fast?”.

Easter weekend special: One of these messages talks about my book which you can obtain by clicking on the link in the sidebar; learn more information here. Effective April 28, 2013 and over the Easter weekend I will reduce the price by 50% to $4.44. Ends midnight EDT (GMT-4) Monday, April 1, 2013. Get the background on using Skype across multiple devices and platforms in preparation for the forthcoming availability of Skype for BlackBerry 10 (no launch dates have been given yet).

Special thanks to my website developer for his work on making it possible to enhance the Gallery feature of WordPress.

Full disclosure: the author has a small holding of BlackBerry shares. But he also has iOS and Android devices in order to experience a cross section of the smartphone and tablet market. These observations are based on publicly available information combined with his own past business experience at senior management levels in high technology markets. His main interest is in seeing several thousand jobs maintained in not only the Canadian economy but also in BlackBerry organizations around the world.

Related articles

• Thorsten Heins talks BlackBerry 10 with Piers Morgan(crackberry.com)

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• BlackBerry 10 First Impressions II: Touch Keyboard and Browser(voiceontheweb.biz)

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A week ago, I wrote my initial post based on my own experience: BlackBerry 10: First Impressions I–Display and Share. Today I want to cover the touch keyboard and the browser. One is a case where BlackBerry offers an entirely new user experience; the other improves (immensely) the previous user experience with browsers – no spinning hourglass!

BlackBerry 10 Touch Keyboard

Touch keyboards have not been “my thing”. I took “typing” (now called “keyboarding”) in high school long before there were PC’s and smartphones. My fingers are too big for consistently accurate keyboarding on the iPhone. So, of course, as a veteran user of legacy BlackBerries, I am supposed to be “awaiting” the arrival of the Q10 with the physical keyboard. However, little did I realize the power of QNX and the hardware to deliver a new keyboarding algorithm.

Some suggestions come up before starting the next word.	Sometimes it takes a few keystrokes to get to the desired word (in this case, 4)

• Predictive text changes the game. Start typing and suggestions come up above related keys.
• It learns what you type frequently; so now it includes suggestions of personally  frequent words such as my website address and email address if it thinks I am headed that way.
• It significantly reduces spelling errors/corrections. Once the word you want starts to appear in the suggestions just flip it up and save the risk of typing mistakes.

And sometimes the first keystroke offers a desired suggestion.	Comes complete with emoticons and other options
Start to type “Http”; you may get “http://” for a suggestion. But looking at my past history when I type it I am offered three different full website names that I have frequented.	Website URL’s and email addresses are changed to active hyperlinks. Phone numbers turn into active call buttons.

One key point: you must flick up the letter “key” below, not the suggestion itself to capture the desired word.

Diehard physical keyboard users will have the option of the forthcoming Q10 but at the sacrifice of a true 720p display – which, as discussed in my previous post, gives stunning HD video and picture quality.

Bottom line: 100 character sentences in 15 to 20 keystrokes and fewer typo/spelling errors. For me and many others, the BlackBerry 10’s touch keyboard offers not only a unique but also more productive typing experience.  As “bradnrad” on the CrackBerry forum linked above says:

BlackBerry 10 is designed for gestures and swiping, clicking and a full screen display. it’s no doubt the Q10 won’t be a let down, but one of the most pleasurable experiences about the Z10 is everything you do in blackberry 10 feels flawlessly designed for a full touch device.

One suggestion re the keyboard: occasionally I find that I have accidentally hit the Send button when attempting to enter a letter/number near the Send button (N, M,<-, for example). It would be helpful to have an option to “Confirm Send” so that a partially complete message is not sent out.

The Browser

My major aggravation with the legacy BlackBerry was the browser. Often it was slow to come up, was missing elements on the web page; most importantly it was not reliable for bringing up a website. Some, such as PGATour.com always popped up, but others just could not make it. Not a satisfactory experience. It was somewhat better on the iPhone and Android devices but again it was not near the browsing experience of a PC.

That all changes with the BlackBerry 10. As has been mentioned many times it has the fastest HTML5 browsing speed on a mobile device:

HTML5 Test on Z10	HTML5 Test Comparisons

In practice it shows. Click on a link in an email, text message, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn and you’re quickly at the targeted web page. Here is where speed plays a huge role. I will often browse through Twitter messages or the Facebook news feed; when I see a desired link I pull it up, take a look and decide whether I want to continue reading or return to Twitter or Facebook.

Two more features:

But then there’s the Reader View – for websites that have not adopted Responsive Design.

Original Post on TSN.ca	Select the Options Menu (three dots at lower right) Select Reader	Reader View brings up the main content in an easily readable format.

Hopefully web designers will incorporate Responsive Design into their sites going forward. Looking at Toronto’s newspapers, the Globe and Mail and National Post both support Responsive Design with no need for using Reader View; however, the Toronto Star has not adopted it (they bring up great pictures but the text font is worse than the example above); one needs Reader View to be able to absorb the content readily.

One feature associated with the browser has had significant use on my part. Share, discussed in the previous post in this series, allows me to quickly share a web page URL via Twitter, Facebook, SMS text message, BlackBerry Messenger or to open the web page on a Bluetooth connected PlayBook, amongst other options. While there are similar opportunities for sharing on other smartphones, it’s the entire Sharing Flow algorithm that makes it very easy (and quick) to Share on the BlackBerry 10.

Bottom line: As mentioned above, the BlackBerry 10 browser is a significant improvement over those on legacy BlackBerry devices (other than the PlayBook which has similar speeds to the BlackBerry 10). It has basically turned browsing on a BlackBerry to the equivalent of browsing on a PC in terms of speed, performance and bringing up a broad range of web page formats, including those with plugin requirements.

In closing, it’s not any one individual feature but rather the combination of the display, keyboard, browser and more that contribute to the overall speed of using the BlackBerry 10 and its claim to offer a new mobile computing experience. Did I say it was fast?

More to follow: The Hub, BlackBerry Messenger.

Full disclosure: the author has a small holding of BlackBerry shares. But he also has iOS and Android devices in order to experience a cross section of the smartphone and tablet market. These observations are based on publicly available information combined with his own past business experience at senior management levels in high technology markets. His main interest is in seeing several thousand jobs maintained in not only the Canadian economy but also in BlackBerry organizations around the world.

Related articles

• BlackBerry Partner Purchases One Million BlackBerry 10 Smartphones (crackberry.com)

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• WhatsApp for BlackBerry 10 now available (mobilesyrup.com)

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New features and improvements:

• New, beautiful calling experience
• One-to-one chats now appear in the correct order
• Option to select your message as ‘read’ with just a few taps
• General fixes and improvements

A call with Dan York provided an opportunity to experience “the new, beautiful calling experience”. Fundamentally the call management bar has been reformatted with various action options and menus during a call:

Call Management Bar	Camera Selection
Speaker Selection	Select Chat Other Party or All
Called Party Messages (Show Messages)	All Messages (Show All Messages)

Note that the “Active Call” button in the Message Action Bar returns you to the call itself.

When making a voice call (no video) the options for the “Show” icon add in “Show Dial Pad”. While normally one would only need the dial pad on a SkypeOut call to deal with an enterprise’s ACD menus.

To check out “One-to-one chats now appear in the correct order” I compared the chat sessions shown in “All Messages” above with those listed under  the “Recent” tab in Skype for Windows Desktop and found the order to be the same.

Note that when you first log into Skype on your iPhone/iPad it may take a few moments for all the relevant chat sessions to be listed.

When making a SkypeOut call to a PSTN number the a similar call management bar appears; however when you click on the “Show Messages” icon, it will open up a window for sending an SMS message. However, SMS messaging from Skype remains outbound only as shown in the attempt to send a response below.

Call to BlackBerry 10	Text Message to SMS	BlackBerry 10 side of the SMS conversation

Make a few Skype for iPhone calls and provide your experience feedback in the Comments.

The Skype Garage Blog post also lists several resolved issues that make operation more reliable and intuitive as well as a few known issues.

A separate post will cover the Skype for iPad 4.6 issues.

[More about Phil Wolff and this guest post below.]

Skype’s been disappointing some of my friends.

They bemoan missing features available in more enterprisey tools, a real Skype for the web app, a platform for coding Skype into our own web services, and a passion for design simplicity that makes Skype clients feel dumbed down. They long for a Skype that’s feature rich, sophisticated, customizable, part of the rest of our onlives, and as exciting as it was when we made our first call.

I relate to that ache. Skype doesn’t seem to be building its next products for me.

Perhaps it shouldn’t.

It comes down to defining what “winning” is in Skypeland. At its core, Skype is a network effects business. Winning is when everyone and everything (groups, orgs, corps, govs; bicycles, cars, refrigerators, homes) has Skype access and uses it for everything. And that Skype has a way to monetize participation in the network by users and partners.

So in a perfectly Skypified universe, seven billion people would use Skype every time they talk or write with each other.

Today, Skype has a quarter of a billion active users, and they only use Skype for a fraction of their communications.

So Skype is focused on three things:

• more active users (which includes reducing churn and increasing acquisition virally and through partnership),
• more activity (through better usability, features, touch points, persuasion), and
• risk management (surviving the next waves of tech/business/social disruptions).

How can Skype avoid becoming obsolete?

Skype will be 10 years’ old in a few months. They’ve been sold a bunch of times but seem to have found their final home. They started with one version of the client, like the black Model T Ford, one for everyone.

Now they make dozens of clients on many devices and operating systems. The next ten years will make the current mix seem archaic as WebRTC and other technologies make the Skype clients just one of many to offer Skype-like services. Every app and every site will offer voice/video/IM to the people and services you connect to through them. Pocket Planes will let you chat with other gamers. Blogs will too, thanks to WordPress plug-ins.

So when the technology for making a pipe between a few endpoints is ubiquitous, the services surrounding the conversation become more important. Directories for finding people. In-chat and in-call augmentation. Archival and sharing of recordings and transcripts. Anonymity and other identity protection. Integration with other services. Integration with commerce through advertising, vendor relationship management, and customer relationship management.

Exactly how well will voice as a phone service, with phone numbers, prosper in this context? I had dinner on Friday with people trying to enable HD audio at the PSTN interconnect level, where your phone call travels from one phone company to another on its way to the callee. This is introducing wideband audio in 2013, a decade after Skype made wideband audio a free and expected service. In turn, Skype as we know it is about to become like PSTN unless it responds well to major threats.

Can Skype design a new architecture that people can trust in the surveillance-state era?

Can it find new cash sources as SkypeOut becomes less valuable to consumers?

Can it adapt to or fend off regulatory pressure in major markets to offer expensive 911 services, to collect taxes/fees for a hundred governments?

Can it make a reliable developer platform that makes basic things easy while inspiring innnovation and diversity?

Can it become invaluable to the other Microsoft divisions?

Can it help you talk to people even if they aren’t using Skype?

Can it embrace technology challenges like wearable computing and WebRTC without losing its brand?

Can Skype rebound from the trust-shattering scandal or crisis that hits every uber-large network at some point?

Can Skype do all this fast enough to keep Apple, Google, and other big players from offering migration destinations for disaffected Skype users? From small players from stealing big chunks of the userbase?

Can Skype do all this while paying attention to everyday operations and customer service?

It’s a big agenda.

[Editor's Note: Phil Wolff formerly managed  Skype Journal, an independent blog covering Skype and IP-based communications. He still hosts a sporadically active group chat that discusses Skype and related issues. Recently he expressed on this chat a draft of what follows; I invited him to post it here.

Phil always challenges and gives you something to think about. In this case, it's Phil's perspective on what he thinks Skype's challenges and opportunities could be as a Microsoft business unit in a world where IP-based communications is becoming more and more "generic".

It was Phil who introduced me to blogging via Skype Journal; all pre-February 2009 posts on Voice On The Web were originally published on Skype Journal. Jim Co.]

Related articles

• There Will Be No WebRTC Skype Killer (bloggeek.me)
• Lync 2013 is everything that Skype should be. Why do they both exist? (arstechnica.com)
• Exclusive-Skype’s Jonathan Rosenberg, Father of SIP, Bolts Back To Cisco (andyabramson.blogs.com)
• Skype 2021: The Next 9 Years (Phil Wolff on slideshare)

While I have found a few reviews that try to define the BlackBerry 10 based on the hardware, the real differentiating focus needs to be on the overall user experience. It’s the combination of both hardware and software resources that is integral to the device’s performance. BlackBerry 10 uses much of the most recent processor and display hardware available. I’m sure we’ll see new models in the future that incorporate Qualcomm’s newer processors featured in the CES keynote. My overview comment in this regard comes from working with the BlackBerry Z10 that is here in my hands today – it’s fast in many respects. Let me repeat – it’s fast!

In practice I have encountered several interesting features that contribute to this overall user experience. I’ll cover them over a few posts; today I want to talk about the display and “Share”.

Display

As we have seen new smartphones come out we have heard about Retina Display on iOS devices and AMOLED on Samsung’s Galaxy devices running Android. They are impressive.

The Z10’s 720p OLED display compares very favourably and is, in my subjective opinion, quite stunning, matching or exceeding the viewing experience of any of these devices. While I put an example of the lock screen on the left, PC displays cannot do it justice. In his very detailed review of the BlackBerry Z10, CrackBerry.com’s Kevin Michaluk notes:

The BlackBerry Z10′s 4.2-inch display sports a resolution of 768×1280, clocking in at 356 pixels per inch. The iPhone 5 in comparison has a 4-inch display with 326 PPI. The hardened display glass features a new technology called Touch On Lens, where the touch technology is applied to the back side of the cover glass to eliminate the need for a separate touch panel. This allows BlackBerry to achieve a thin design. Under the finger, the display was always extremely responsive.

This sunset photo was originally taken on my 12.1 megapixel Canon PowerShot SX40HS camera with a telephoto lens.  It catches the smallest ripples in the water of the infinity pool and reflections of the setting sun of both the pool and ocean. (Location: Tamarindo, Costa Rica where watching the sunset is a bit of a ritual.)

For the lockscreen and wallpaper I have used the LockScreen Wallpaper application.

Comparison of the New York Times app provides some interesting points:

New York Times Top News BlackBerry Z10 (1280 x 720)	New York Times Top News iPhone 5 (640 x 1136)
NYT Higgs Article BlackBerry 10	NYT Higgs Article iPhone 5

The BlackBerry 10 display:

• uses the Slate font as its primary font throughout to deliover a crisper, easier read than a Serif font.
• provides slightly more content on the Top News Page as a result of its slightly higher resolution

The good news is that both deliver a format suited to the display size.

Bottom line: the combination of the display hardware and the Slate font, along with its overall graphics speed are one major contributor to a unique user experience. You have to see the actual device to fully realize its richness.

Share

Share is probably the most under-promoted feature of BlackBerry 10. It was certainly promoted as a feature to incorporate into third party offerings at developer events during discussions involving user interface design.

Many of the inherent apps, such as the browser, File Manager, photos and videos,  include a “Share” button in the action bar or action menu. Third party apps such as News applications (New York Times and CBC News), have incorporated the Share button.

Clicking on the “Share” button will suggest sharing an item, whether a web page, news or sports story to multiple destinations:

File Manager Share	Share Destination Options

without the need to go into any associated application. Select your networking mode, if necessary select a contact, and send out a link, Tweet, Facebook update or view it on your Playbook, amongst other choices.

Bottom line: The Share feature and its tight integration with these applications is one more feature that contributes to making use of the BlackBerry 10 “faster”. Hopefully more third party applications will recognize the value of Share, if appropriate in the context of the application, and incorporate it via the developer tools available.

These are only a couple of the features that I have found of significant value in the unique BlackBerry 10 experience. I am still finding new features involving the messaging integration in the Hub, learning all you can do with Voice Control, watching video (movies, sportscasts) on my HDTV screen, listening to the UK’s ClassicFM 0n my office stereo radio/CD player and many other nifty features. Next: the browser and using the Hub with Peak and Flow.

Bottom line: After taking a day or two to learn the new user experience, did I say ‘it’s fast”? (And the learning curve is much less onerous than for starting up with Windows 8.)

Full disclosure: the author has a small holding of BlackBerry shares. But he also has iOS and Android devices in order to experience a cross section of the smartphone and tablet market. These observations are based on publicly available information combined with his own past business experience at senior management levels in high technology markets. His main interest is in seeing several thousand jobs maintained in not only the Canadian economy but also in BlackBerry organizations around the world.

Related articles

• A roundup of positive indicators for the BlackBerry Z10 on its one month anniversary (crackberry.com)

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Back in January when the BlackBerry Developer Relations team was holding one of its weekend Port-a-thons I decided to try out the BlackBerry App Generator simply to  experience the process for launching an app, without the need to understand any programming language or tools. It appeared to be fairly simple and straightforward.

Clicking on the “Create Your App” button I was taken through the process in only a few steps that basically involved entering a link to Voice On The Web, incorporating a logo and creating a few representative screenshots. The entire process required 10 to 15 minutes.

As a final step you must also register as a Vendor and select what you want to charge for your App; “Free” is one option. BlackBerry also requests some form of verification of your business, either via business registration documents or other appropriate means; finally, if you charge for your app, they need any relevant tax registration, such as VAT in Europe or HST/GST in Canada.

Once approved as a vendor you have access to the Vendor portal where you can track and modify your apps as appropriate. In my case I had to wait a couple of weeks for final approval due to the huge number of apps submitted during the port-a-thons (~35,000). Finally it became available on BlackBerry World for both BlackBerry 10 and BlackBerry Playbook.

And the Vendor Portal provides access to managing the ongoing app activity: charges, revisions, comments, etc.

Some representative screenshots of the actual app in action:

BlackBerry 10

Home Screen	Sample Post
Post Menu	Share Options

BlackBerry PlayBook

Home Page Swipe to left or right to see additional posts summaries

Individual Posts Arrows to slide between posts; swipe down to view post content Note the Twitter and Facebook buttons

Bottom line: Generating a smartphone app from the content and RSS feed of a website provides one more access point to content on a website’s posts. Costs were negligible, even in terms of time and, in this case, for the user, the app is free.

On the other hand, bringing up a “responsive design” website directly in a smartphone’s browser retains the full integrity of the original website. Menus and the associated navigation remain readily available; the sidebar, while moved below the main content page being viewed, is accessible simply by swiping downward. Via the menu you can access WordPress Pages in addition to Posts. All the options to “Share” a web page remain available.

The BlackBerry 10 browser’s Reader mode display option, shown on the right, retains the actual formatting while providing a standardized, readily readable font with easy adjustment of font size. While larger images are reduced in size in the Reader mode, tapping on the image brings up the full size image (within the constraints of the actual display size).

While generating an app for a website provides one more access point to its content, I still have to go along with recommending use of responsive design and the smartphone or tablet browser. I will not be looking at doing an iOSx or Android app for Voice On The Web. My primary benefit of this exercise has been the opportunity to experience in practice one form of the app developer submission process without having any programming or developer tool experience. (Can anyone say FORTRAN IV or WATFOR?)

While many Skype users have taken advantage of this feature, some have raised objections but then again it’s optional. On the other hand if you are into using Microsoft products you will want to get the bigger picture that I see evolving with the introduction of Windows 8, Office 2013 and associated “cloud” offerings, such as SkyDrive.

As a prelude I should mention that the only reason I previously had a Microsoft ID was to use Windows [Live] Messenger or its predecessors several years ago. I stopped using Messenger four or five years ago when I found that all my Messenger contacts (not many) were also Contacts on Skype. So I had basically let my Microsoft ID languish in favour of Skype for its richer feature set.

However, over the past few months I have been learning, by pragmatic experience, more about the evolving cloud-based Microsoft ecosystem.  Skype account integration with a Microsoft ID is only one component of the entire story. A new Windows 8 desktop PC (acquired to address RAM and processor issues with my previous PC that cost me one to two hours a day), a few days evaluating a Microsoft Surface, signing up initially for Microsoft Exchange and later Office 365 have all contributed to building a better idea of Microsoft’s “big picture’”.  Microsoft ID has become the gateway to many Microsoft offerings.

First here’s what I now log into with my Microsoft ID:

• Skype (on PC’s, iPhone, iPad and Android tablet)
• MS Exchange
• Windows 8
  • Microsoft ID is required to log into Windows 8 in place of independent Windows User iD’s
  • Logging into Windows 8 auto-logs me into Skype for Windows 8, Mail, People and other MS Windows 8 applications, including SkyDrive
• SkyDrive (also accessed from MacBook, iPhone, iPad and Android)
• Office 365 (Office 2013 on Windows and Office 2011 on Mac)
• Microsoft Surface (when I was evaluating it)
• (Outlook.com but with MS Exchange using the same ID I can no longer access Outlook.com)
• Windows Live Messenger (but that is being merged into Skype)
• Windows Live Writer

Now over to my BlackBerry 10. I have now had six days to experience this new mobile computing platform. I referenced some reviews in a previous post. At this time just a few quick comments:

• It’s fast. Access to messages, via the Hub, launching programs, web browsing especially, returning to open programs – they’ve taken away many of the little hesitations and pauses one gets with previous devices. Let me repeat – it’s fast.
• The Hub is the “always open” messaging feature where BlackBerry leverages QNX’s multi-tasking capability. While maybe Android supports multi-tasking programs in background, BlackBerry leverages its multi-tasking to provide a totally unique user experience.
• The keyboard: I’m not waiting for the Q10 with a physical keyboard. I can do 50 to 100 character sentences in 10 to 20 keystrokes (and I don’t have to go back to correct typing errors nearly as often).
• Gesturing: There is no “Home” button to launch activity. I had some experience with gesturing when using the BlackBerry Playbook. There’s a bit of a learning curve but once you get it you can move quickly to wherever you want to be. (And the learning curve is no where near as much as with using the new Windows 8 tile UI.)
• An amazing display; more on this topic and the BlackBerry 10 in a future post.

Bottom line: the BlackBerry Z10 is an entire new mobile user experience. As one who has always pushed multi-tasking to the limit (and sold the concept and associated user experience for a major portion of my career), BlackBerry got it right.

Over the weekend I was watching the Lync Conference keynote given by Tony Bates, President of Microsoft Skype Division and Derek Burney, Corporate Vice President, Lync. More about that in a later post. However, at one point mention was made of SkyDrive, Microsoft’s cloud storage offering. Out of curiosity I decided to see if I could access SkyDrive via the BlackBerry 10 browser. And I got some interesting results that give a much better picture of the extent to which your Microsoft ID  is leveraged to reach into the cloud, especially in today’s BYOD environment.

In the BlackBerry 10 browser I went to www.skydrive.com (it redirects to skydrive.live.com). Asked me to login with my Microsoft ID. Then I ended up at a screen that gave some of the standard sidebar options for accessing files (as seen in, say, Office 2013) but I also noticed additional links to my two Windows PC’s on the sidebar (I still have that old Windows 7 PC online).

I clicked on the one for my new PC; there is a 2-step security procedure. It sent out a security code to my associated mobile phone (my BlackBerry in this case). Switched over to the BlackBerry 10 Hub; sure enough the message was there with my code. Switched back to my browser and entered the code. (BlackBerry 10′s true background processing feature makes this switching quite fast – no hesitations.)

On the left below is what I saw:

PC C: Drive Screen Favorites, Library, Computer (as also seen in Windows 8 File Explorer)	Select a file Notice how one can use right/left swipe gestures across the bottom to move between file images

But is was only when I rotated to landscape that I found the full feature set available.

You can “slide” through the various files via the file slider at the bottom. Across the top are a variety of options for handling the file in focus, including the ability to download the file and to share it using email, social networking or links:

As an aside I also found I could access Windows Live Messenger via the small chat icon in the upper right but it’s not a user friendly way to access and use Messenger. I’ll stick to Skype 6.x for accessing my Messenger contacts (and that goes away soon with the Live Messenger integration into Skype).

Bottom line: While it would be great to have a SkyDrive app for BlackBerry 10, this browser-launched approach provides a path to any files on my PC that are not accessible via my DropBox account for which a BlackBerry 10 app exists. More importantly it points out how deeply Microsoft is integrating into cloud-based services for more universal access to their offerings. It serves as an example of why the Microsoft ID is becoming more important for those who use any of Microsoft’s applications or services.

From the BlackBerry perspective, I have found that I can access many “applications’, such as PGATour.com, through their [mobile] website and get results as quickly as (or even faster than accessing the application on my iPhone 5.

As for the Skype – Lync demo, yes, you also log into Lync via your Microsoft ID but, as an enterprise focused offering, the Skype-Lync integration is a topic for another post.

As for any issue with using the Microsoft ID with Skype, yes, I am well aware that you are limited to associating it with only one Skype account. On the other hand I always launch Windows 8 directly into Desktop mode via the Start8 utility where I use Skype for Windows Classic (Desktop) for all my Skype activities, including access to my “testing” Skype account.

No Roaming Charges

My goal was to avoid any of the expensive roaming charges associated with using a wireless carrier outside of Canada. It would have cost $50.00 for 15 minutes of voice and 100 text messages and $40.00 for 10MB of data. Airplane mode was turned on for the iPhone; turned off the carrier connection on my Torch. Here is my “no roaming charges” experience.

Availability

I found WiFi was available at all five hotels on our tour. My Priority Club membership meant I had free WiFi at an Intercontinental Hotel. A lodge in the “remote” Tortuguero National Park on the Caribbean coast had recently installed WiFi in their reception area.

A hotel near the Arenal volcano had good WiFi in their reception area and intermittent WiFi in the rooms which were essentially multi-room chalets in rows up a mountain side (so we could all view the volcano clearly). The J.W. Marriott at Guanacaste on the Pacific Coast had WiFi but with a reduced charge due to our association with a tour. The Quality Hotel for our last night prior to flying home had free WiFi. But here was the real surprise: our tour stopped at several wayside restaurants for lunch; they all had WiFi. And even some of the “tourist” experiences, such as a Crocodile Tour, had WiFi in their store.

I also bought a one hour WiFi subscription during our two stopovers at Miami airport and finally had a chance to check out GoGo Inflight during our flight home from Miami to Toronto. The San Jose, Costa Rica airport had free WiFi.

So while I did not have Internet access while riding the tour bus (where cell phone use was discouraged) or on the riverboat tours in the various jungle rivers, it was readily available at every stop along the way. Sometimes you had to ask for a password but most staff had the answer immediately. The FourSquare map on the left provides an indication of where I checked in; large dots indicate multiple check-in points.

(As a side observation the local riverboat tour guides all had mobile phones to share the locations of various bird and animal sightings.)

Using IP-based Communications

I had three options for free calls back to Canada or Europe (Belgium, Italy): Skype, BBM Voice or Rogers One Number (from my wife’s MacBook).   One significant advantage of these services is they all use HD Voice, providing much clearer audio on voice calls than any carrier can provide. Facetime was also available but is not a normal mode for my activities; Facebook Messenger was also an option but again something I use infrequently. At various times I used all of the first three in context, including a Skype video call, but a couple of observations.

Voice/video call blocking over Skype does not suffice any more. At the Park lodge, the WiFi blocked Skype voice calls; try Skype Test Call and you were cut off five seconds into the call. Yet I was able to make a very clear 15 minute voice call to an Italian acquaintance using BBM Voice (and now I can reveal he was testing out BBM Voice on a BlackBerry Z10). I attempted a FaceTime call; it rang but the other party did not answer (all of these offerings should have the equivalent of Skype Test Call).

The lodge was probably still trying to recover the cost of supporting the relic shown to the right but I did not see anyone using it during our two days there. On the other hand Skype needs to start working to ensure it is not indiscriminately blocked where others dare to provide free voice and video communications.

As for text messages, I could access and respond to all my BlackBerry text messages using Rogers One Number on my wife’s MacBook. Not many messages but was handy when I needed to reset a Google 2-step password, etc. I also exchanged iMessage messages with another iPhone user in Canada over WiFi even though my iPhone wanted me to disable Airplane mode.

If I have one complaint it’s with the Internet service provider at the Intercontinental and Marriott (was the same one for both). Why do I need to log back onto their service every half hour or so? This was essentially a time wasting nuisance with no financial gain to the service provider or hotel. And why do they not recognize that hotel guests are usually going to have more than one device that requires WiFi access? Between the two of us we had six devices.

Why was WiFi intermittent at Arenal Springs? Too many WiFi access points. It seems like they put an access point in each chalet and they overlapped. Devices wanted to drift amongst the access points. The meshing of access points is still a technology under development.

Bottom line: WiFi is becoming a much more reliable and available unregulated Stealth carrier as an alternative to roaming services. I was able to maintain any necessary communication (not that I want to do much while on vacation) and follow my email, Twitter and Facebook feeds on any of my mobile devices with no difficulty. In fact, I also watched the BlackBerry 10 launch event from that Marriott hotel using my BlackBerry Playbook – it had the fastest web browser. And I was able to track the reviews and follow up news during the remainder of my trip via Twitter and Google+.

My final cost for Internet service over the ten days? $20 at the Marriott, $9 at Miami Airport and $4 for GoGo Inflight. These gave me unlimited calling (except GoGo Inflight) and data.

Note: last week Rogers announced new rates forthcoming for roaming in the U.S.

Update: Today TruPhone announced they are going to offer WiFi with their TruPhone+ service that combines use of both GSM and WiFi for network access:

‘Truphone+’ seamlessly integrates the company’s unique Global GSM network with its internet calling application. The combination of these two technologies enables those with no GSM coverage to make and receive calls using WiFi in their homes and offices or in a WiFi hot spot. Importantly, customers will often benefit from improved call quality.

Truphone + uses “intelligent routing” to automatically choose whether to carry the call over GSM or WiFi by making real time measurement of signal quality. The user needs only to ‘press call’ to make a secure connection over the highest quality link available.

With an elegant user interface designed to streamline the user experience, Truphone+ puts more control in the hands of the user. A call cost indicator displays the precise per-minute cost so the user can decide when and where they want to make a call, thereby eliminating bill shock.

One more reinforcement of WiFi as the Stealth carrier for mobile communications.

The best value of the trip: we checked out the cost of staying at the J.W. Marriott if we had gone on our own. Two nights would have cost two-thirds of the entire cost of our trip with nine nights of hotels, bus travel, three meals a day and a very knowledgeable and effective tour director. If you want to get a great cross-section of Costa Rica’s geographical features and wildlife, Caravan’s tour is highly recommended.

Related articles

• What’s Eating Your Data Plan? (blogs.blackberry.com)

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Skype 4.5 for iPad – the new Portrait UI experience

It starts with logging in. When I attempted to log into Skype with my Skype user name it reminded me that I had associated my Skype name with a Microsoft ID. While remaining an option to use either ID, using my Microsoft ID does include access to any Live Messenger contacts I had.

The changes in Portrait mode deal with the fact that the left Recent/People/History panel would be squished onto the left side of the display and was essentially useless for navigation. I always found myself rotating to landscape mode to get the full picture of the left panel.

With this iteration, Skype 4.5 for iPad now launches into a full screen “All Contacts” page when in Portrait mode. Then Skype for iPad invokes a gesture to proceed.

Swipe from the left side and you get the previous “People/Recent/History” panel  overlaying the left side but with a full width view.

Launch screen in Portrait mode	Swipe from left to get the “Index” panel

As for the “menu” bar at the top, the options are to select the “People/Recent/History” panel overlay via a touch selection, launch a dial pad and perform Search activities:

Selecting the “All” button brings up your “Lists” menu including options to filter the displayed Contacts to Online Contacts, Skype Contacts, Recent Contacts, your iPad Contacts and any Lists that you have built up using Skype for Windows Desktop or Skype for Mac.

iPad Contacts is one way to access your iCloud Contacts for making SkypeOut calls, provided you have an iCloud account. This option showed up automatically on installing Skype for iPad. iPad Contacts do not show up in any of the other Contact List options.

Selecting your account name at the top brings a Profile panel for accessing various settings, including details of “My Profile” and updating the mood message.

Display Contacts Options	Profile Menu

In addition to the Contacts directories, as in previous versions, the main screen may also contain individual Conversation logs, including chat conversations, or, if History is selected in the “People/Recent/History” panel, a listing of all your past conversations, any of which can be brought up by a simple touch selections.

Landscape mode remains unchanged with respect to always displaying the “Index” panel on the left sidebar and Contacts, Conversation logs and History on the right.

Other Changes

One of the annoying aspects of Skype for iPhone/iPad was that, in the “Recent” or “History” screens, the conversation logs would not be listed in chronological order going backwards in time. This has been addressed in Skype 4.5 for iPhone/iPad.

The new versions have also incorporated a feature of Skype for Windows Desktop where dropped calls can be recovered automatically. This has worked for me many times when using Skype for Windows Desktop; however, not always.

Finally, should you call an emergency number from Skype for iPhone the call will automatically be redirected to call out over the carrier’s voice channel for making calls from the iPhone.

Minor changes have also been made to improve the UI experience on the iPad Mini.

Bottom line: More of a maintenance release, the new Portrait mode UI in Skype for iPad does significantly improve navigation around Skype for iPad in this display mode. Otherwise, the changes are iterative but do improve the overall user experience in small ways.

One very annoying aspect, and this is probably an iOS 5/6 issue rather than a Skype issue: every time I leave Skype for iPad to go to another application, it appears I have to go through the entire auto-login process when returning to Skype. Maybe I am getting spoiled by the background processing feature of QNX on my PlayBook (and soon to come on my BlackBerrry Z10). This is not the experience when using Skype for iPhone.

While I still await the arrival of my Z10, it was interesting to follow the coverage over the past week as I completed my vacation in Costa Rica last week and then attended the Toronto BlackBerry Experience Forum on Monday.

Reviews have largely been positive, especially by those who “get” the value of its unique BlackBerry Hub/Flow/Peek features. Some samples:

CrackBerry.com’s Simon Sage gives a very through and complete walk-through in BlackBerry 10 Review:

Though BlackBerry 10 has one foot in the past, it reaches out in new directions to finally meet competing platforms head-on. Navigation has been optimized for touch input, doing away with the optical trackpad. Developers have been given Cascades from T.A.T. so they can make apps beautiful. Powerful camera software opens new possibilities for photos and video. Active Frames provide helpful at-a-glance status of running applications. Users can now share live views of their device displays through BlackBerry Messenger.

The bottom line is that BlackBerry 10 really is the best of the old and the best of the new assembled seamlessly into an elegant, practical, and integrated package.

My favorite review is David Pogue’s in the New York Times, BlackBerry, Rebuilt, Lives to Fight Another Day, where he starts off with:

I’m sorry. I was wrong.

This apology is for the bespectacled student at my talk in Cleveland, and the lady in the red dress in Florida, and anyone else who’s recently asked me about the future of the BlackBerry. I told all of them the same thing: that it’s doomed.

He goes on later to say:

Well, BlackBerry’s Hail Mary pass, its bet-the-farm phone, is finally here. It’s the BlackBerry Z10, and guess what? It’s lovely, fast and efficient, bristling with fresh, useful ideas.

and, after a fairly thorough detailed review, concludes with:

So then, is the delightful BlackBerry Z10 enough to save its company?

Honestly? It could go either way. But this much is clear: BlackBerry is no longer an incompetent mess — and its doom is no longer assured.

Ewan McLeod, author of Mobile Industry Review, in 10 Things I Love About The BlackBerry Z10, gets to his 10th “Thing” and then says: “Ok I was only going to write 10 but here are some more that I can’t help but tell you about.” Check out the review for his 23 “Things”.

Stephen Fry, in The Fire Question, starts out with

It’s very simple. I have a Samsung Galaxy III, a BlackBerry Z10 , an iPhone 5, an HTC Windows 8x and an LG Nexus 4. More or less the smartest soldiers in the smartphone army.

There’s a fire in my flat/hotel-room/bordello/ski-chalet. I have only enough time to take ONE. Which do I choose? This is the question I have to ask myself.

He then puts down his thoughts on each of those devices and concludes the BlackBerry Z10 comments with:

But if “taking a little getting used to” is the worst I can say of it, then let me say the best of it. I think the BB Z 10 (the virtual keyboard version) is one of the very very best gadgets I’ve ever played with. From the moment you slide your finger up and the gorgeous display fades subtly into view to the moment you pull down the little sleep curtain to reveal a pretty orange alarm clock, you are won over.

Read the post to find out his choice in the fire scenario.

QNX’s hometown newspaper¹, the Ottawa Citizen, concludes BlackBerry 10 a whole new cellphone experience, with:

The BB10 is a glowing technical achievement, but its success is far from certain.

It changes things. It forces people to adjust to a new style of mobile computing. BlackBerry has introduced this kind of earth-shaking change once already with its Playbook tablet computer. Those tablets were left to languish on store shelves while consumers opted for more familiar user experiences and app stores stocked full of choices.

BlackBerry wanted to make this device a powerhouse, and it has succeeded. Whether consumers respond in kind is yet to be determined.

As for the customer response on Canada’s launch day, BlackBerry, the company formerly known as Research in Motion, issued a brief statement:

“In Canada, yesterday was the best day ever for the first day of a launch of a new BlackBerry smartphone.  In fact, it was more than 50% better than any other launch day in our history in Canada,” said Thorsten Heins, President & CEO of BlackBerry.  “In the UK, we have seen close to three times our best performance ever for the first week of sales for a BlackBerry smartphone.”

and the Globe and Mail reports, in RIM hails ‘best day ever’ for a Canadian BlackBerry launch:

Mark Langton, a spokesman for BCE Inc.’s Bell Mobility, said that Tueday saw the “biggest day one sales” of any previous BlackBerry device, and that a large number were people upgrading from older BlackBerrys. Rogers Communications Inc., meanwhile, said it sold more BlackBerrys on the Z10’s Feb. 5 launch date than on any other day since helping launch BlackBerry service in 1999 – and noted that some stores had temporarily sold out of the device.

Off to a great start in two markets where BlackBerry maintained some degree of success during the “long wait”. We still await the response in the U.S. market next month to get a better feel for its impact there.

In a separate post I’ll talk about Monday’s BlackBerry Experience Forum attended by many of BlackBerry’s enterprise customers in the southern Ontario area.

¹While BlackBerry’s headquarters remain in Waterloo, Ontario, the QNX developer team has always operated out of a suburb of Ottawa.

Related articles

• Yesterday’s Canada BlackBerry Z10 launch was the biggest ever for BlackBerry (crackberry.com)

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I’ll post about BlackBerry 10 over the weekend but as background I want to recommend two recent and significant posts.:

Chris Umiastowski at CrackBerry.com provides both the history and feature set of QNX, describing why it presents some unique opportunities as the real core asset for RIM’s future:

History of QNX and its Implementation in BlackBerry 10

In 2000, almost 20 years after the first version of QNX hit the market, the QNX team had completely re-written the OS and launched Neutrino. As Dan Dodge describes it, “QNX is used in systems where the cost of failure is very high”. The Neutrino operating system is used to control huge Cisco Internet routers, lighting and equipment for huge Las Vegas shows, slot machines, windmill turbines, and nuclear reactors, just to name a few markets.

Randy Cheng’s interview at CNet with Alec Saunders provides the full story on the evolution of the Blackberry 10 Developer Relations program and why we can expect to see over 70,000 apps announced for the launch:

Meet the man who would make BlackBerry apps cool

Saunders has embraced a concept that RIM had long ignored: that developers and a healthy app “ecosystem” can make or break an operating system. He’s tried to make the company more accommodating and responsive to developers. It’s the touchy-feely stuff RIM execs never thought was important.

My recent series on BlackBerry 10 provides some additional background; today represents the opportunity to get the full picture. You can see the RIM employees’s excitement building on Twitter and Facebook. Alec’s Developer Relations team, along with the entire RIM team under new CEO Thorsten Heins, deserves kudos for bringing together the infrastructure for what has to be one of the most complex technology company recovery efforts ever.

The final measure, of course, is user adoption. A new adventure for RIM begins.

I’ll have more to say on the launch information over the weekend; meanwhile back to completing a long overdue personal vacation. I will also be reporting on how I managed to stay in touch relying totally on WiFi connections for the entire 10 days; no roaming charges allowed! And there’s an interesting BBM Voice story in there.