Blackberry Mobile Fusion is an enterprise centered product that allows mobile device management to be done through a single, web-based interface. It also includes support to allow users access to work email and data at all times, while securely protecting said data.

“At RIM we feel like we were the first mobile management solution.”

Mobile Fusion was designed with IT managers in mind, and RIM advertises it as an efficient platform for managers to control and monitor business related devices.

Vikas Shakyaver, Enterprise Product Manager for Research In Motion, covered the basic security and features in the new version of Mobile Fusion.

“Blackberry Mobile Fusion is Blackberry’s next-gen mobile device management platform.”

When RIM representatives were asked if Windows Phone is in the agenda for future supported products of the Mobile Fusion software, they answered that the platform will be included once it’s relative in enterprise environments and enough consumers show a requirement for it.

Mobile Fusion Universal Device Management Service

Blackberry Mobile Fusion now includes a universal device management service. The new software version of Mobile Fusion has been adapted to include Blackberry 7 and previous Blackberry OS devices, Blackberry Playbook tablets and now Android (2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 3, 4) and iOS (version 4) devices. That’s right, IT managers can now interact and manage Android and iOS devices thanks to Mobile Fusion.

RIM identified that with enterprise software like Mobile Fusion, end users look for the same type of elegance and experience which they have in their personal lives, in their professional lives. Mobile Fusion allows for a safe, secure and seamless integration between business and personal mobile device use.

Most importantly, the Mobile Fusion software allows IT managers a single management layer to manage all related devices. There is no additional management software required, and all devices now apply.

To utilize the universal device service on iOS and Android consumers must first install a unique application on the related device which authenticates access and helps protect data. The Mobile Fusion application for iOS and Android is available on the public market as well as through the Blackberry site, so its not difficult to find.

Blackberry Mobile Fusion also includes security measures to restrict access to devices and notify managers when a device is not in compliance with company standards. Mobile Fusion includes jailbreak and rooting detection, and can even be adapted to restrict access to iOS and Android devices altogether.

When a device is out of compliance, the system allows managers to notify the user in order to give them a chance to fix the issue themselves, or just take care of the problem through the software.

Mobile Fusion also allows management of installed apps, and IT managers can install or remove mandatory apps, as well as remove alternate apps from a device (apps that are not installed by IT managers through Mobile Fusion software).

Anyone interested in more information about the software may visit the official Blackberry Mobile Fusion web page.

Annual licenses for the Blackberry device service and universal device service start at $99 ($4.00 per month).

There sure was a lot of talk about “Blackberry People” last week, and RIM casually threw the phrase around so much, that it seemed they were actually trying to whisper sweet nothings into the ears of every Blackberry World attendant.

Our casual joking aside, it was evident throughout the keynote, and the entire conference, that RIM undoubtedly took the time to figure out who their majority user base is, and what they stand for.

Thorsten Heins, CEO of Research In Motion made several comments regarding Blackberry users, elaborating on who they are as a community.

“We spend a lot of time on who are we mostly talking to, who is the target customer. The common denominator with all our customers is that they are striving to succeed.”

“Blackberry people care about being productive.”

“Blackberry is focused on Blackberry people, our users are hyperconnected.”

The question still remains, who are “Blackberry people”? Are “Blackberry People” comprised of mainly an older audience which includes business minded folk, or are “Blackberry People” younger in nature and ideals?

Do Blackberry People walk the city streets with the rest of us common folk, or are they floating along on some trans-spiritual highway in the heavens?

It’s hard to focus on such a diverse community and choose one focus group, or one specific age group. Blackberry users are everywhere, and the community is made up of people of all ages, denominations, and nationalities. Most of all, Blackberry users seem to have their own agenda when it comes to Blackberry products, and they utilize each platform to achieve whichever goals it is they need to achieve.

Blackberry People include corporate and business employees, DJ’s and music enthusiasts, developers and programmers, and even young “productive” minded hooligans.

One thing is for certain, the Blackberry platform is now solely dedicated to “success”. RIM wants its consumers to succeed, and they were pushing this idea with every resource available to them.

Thorsten Heins is working to change the way Blackberry applies to the world, not necessarily by changing the platform or their business goals and directives, but by this idea of success that he so fondly alludes to. During the general session on Tuesday morning, Heins went on further to say that the idea of “Blackberry People” and “Success” is not mutually exclusive.

“When I talk about people that want to be successful, that is not in any way exclusive. The design objective of Blackberry products is to help people succeed.”

“There are 55 million Blackberry subscribers.”

“Blackberry is all about success. This is the core of Blackberry.”

Heins also clarified that the Blackberry platform “aids 77 million people to succeed on a daily basis.”

It would appear, RIM is a little obsessed with this idea of success, which is not necessarily a terrible thing. At least it’s evident they’re focusing on the future. Also, we now know who “Blackberry People” are, sort of.

We, at Blackberry Rocks, will stick to believing in our previous idea of Blackberry People, floating spiritual orbs who happen to use electronic gadgets to achieve their aspirations.

Rumors were abound that in order to adapt and grow, RIM would be abandoning the mobile consumer space and would instead focus on what’s always been its strongest audience, the enterprise and professional market.

The rumors were sparked by Hein’s original comments in which he stated that RIM was refocusing on the enterprise market. The press and media took this statement out of context, and began speculation that RIM would no longer produce consumer related products.

“Many said that RIM will leave the consumer business- that is absolutely not true, that is not what I said.”

Heins clarified further that by his original statement, he only meant that RIM needed to stop designing as many services in-house and that they should instead try and achieve their consumer-based goals through external partnerships.

“We spend a lot of time on who are we mostly talking to, who is the target customer. The common denominator with all our customers is that they are striving to succeed.”

Heins went on to strengthen the idea of “success” which he first talked about yesterday morning during his presentation at the general session (keynote). RIM has refocused its goals to target productive Blackberry users who strive to be successful.

“When I talk about people that want to be successful that is not in any way exclusive. The design objective of Blackberry products is to help people succeed.”

Throughout the conference RIM continuously referred to it’s consumer base as “Blackberry people,” and identified them as all people who wish to succeed. It’s evident that RIM also plans to succeed. There is no reason why this new focus and “success” plan shouldn’t prevail, so long as RIM sticks to their guns.

RIM has made is abundantly clear that they want plenty of applications and content to be available for the Blackberry 10 launch later this year.

“We understand you want key content on your Blackberry when we deliver the new platform to you.”

Thorsten Heins, the CEO of RIM, identified that consumers want ample content available to them proceeding a product launch, and he clarified that RIM is dedicated to making that happen.

In order to attract developers to the dark side -okay, so that’s not politically correct- the Blackberry side, RIM gave every developer at the Blackberry 10 Jam one of the Dev Alpha devices for use during the development process.

By now you’re probably wondering how the red and blue caped crusader comes into play, keep reading, we’ll get to that.

RIM is doing more than just giving away a bunch of innovative phones to boost application development for the upcoming Blackberry 10 platform. Alec Saunders, RIM’s VP of Developer Relations, revealed that Blackberry will guarantee developers a minimum of $10,000 in annual revenue. If first year developers happen to fall short of the 10K mark, RIM will pay the difference.

But don’t for a second believe that RIM hasn’t added some stipulations in order to cover themselves. Before RIM pays for anything, the application in question must make at least $1,000 in the App store. If, and only if, the application makes its $1,000 sales mark, then RIM will play Superman and swoop in to save the day. This policy will at least form some kind of protective film for RIM, ensuring they only have to support quality apps.

Unfortunately, all you silly developers out there looking to make a quick buck with the next phone tanning app, we’re sad to report that you won’t be seeing a check from RIM anytime soon.

While we applaud RIM for adopting such an ambitious campaign, we can’t help but ponder how desperate it all seems. With this campaign RIM seems more than just desperate, they’re practically shouting to the heavens that Blackberry 10 apps will be sufficient, and we all know that a whole lot of shouting doesn’t just make things true.

If RIM maintained focus on building a great development platform, the apps would eventually come. Although, like RIM, Microsoft has also offered developers money for quality apps, so one could easily argue the counterpoint that desperation is absent and this is now a normal process.

We’re not knocking you RIM, we’re just wondering if this campaign is such a brilliant idea.

Nevertheless, the real news here is that RIM is entirely dedicated to fleshing out the application market for the Blackberry 10 product line. In fact, they’re so dedicated that they’re willing to guarantee developers $10,000 in profit.

Good luck with that RIM.

Blackberry users began squirming in their seats yesterday morning during the keynote when RIM confirmed that the Blackberry 10 Dev Alpha device is, in fact, running the latest version of the Blackberry OS.

The demonstrations of the device and the Blackberry 10 features showed off a tremendously fluid user interface and virtual experience, but there was one blinding problem. The Blackberry 10 Dev Alpha device is purely a touchscreen candy-bar style phone, a physical keyboard was absent.

RIM has always offered Blackberry devices that included a hardware keyboard in the past. It’s understandable, and only natural, that worry would wrack a community which has grown accustomed to a physical keyboard on their mobile devices, especially when it comes to the public demonstration of a touchscreen mobile device that includes only virtual keyboard support.

Thorsten Heins, CEO of Research In Motion, confirmed this morning during a press exclusive Q&A session that RIM will be releasing Blackberry 10 devices with a physical keyboard. His confirmation puts to rest the rumors that Blackberry 10 will be a touchscreen exclusive. For those of you still holding your breath, you can now release.

“I can confirm that the physical keyboard will be an option in the Blackberry 10 portfolio.”

Heins went on further to say that while developing BB10 RIM focused on one question.

“What is the ideal typing experience on a Blackberry?”

The Blackberry experience was designed with this specific approach in mind. It’s no secret that typing is a core component of the Blackberry platform.

“We want the typing experience on the Blackberry to be the best in the world, whether that be on a physical keyboard or a virtual keypad.”

Several times during the keynote yesterday morning, Heins hinted at the idea that the Blackberry 10 Dev Alpha device was only one of many products to come. But it wasn’t until this morning at the Q&A that he officially confirmed it.

“Make no mistake we only showed you one element of what the future of Blackberry will be, there are other elements to come.”

So, for those of you who have been erupting in fear, loathing and just pure nerd rage, you can relax your minds. The Blackberry 10 device lineup will include devices with a physical keyboard.

Throughout the event, we were certain of two things, RIM is backing the new features of the Blackberry 10 OS, and they are also backing NFC (Near Field Communication) technology with everything they’ve got.

According to RIM, NFC technology is the link between the physical and virtual worlds. Several times RIM employee’s stated that NFC is going to be the next biggest achievement of mobile technology since the birth of data.

A couple of demonstration booths we visited at the Blackberry Solutions Showcase utilized NFC.

At the Blackberry Music Gateway booth, a demo showed that the new gateway model takes advantage of NFC technology to connect instantly to a Blackberry mobile device.

RIM also had a booth showcasing the Blackberry office setup (it was comprised of a Playbook, a Blackberry mobile phone, a screen and wireless peripherals), and the office used NFC to communicate between various devices.

Of course, there are other practical uses for NFC technology. Allow us to paint you a picture; imagine paying at a standard checkout counter, using only your phone, by merely tapping the cash register. There are no other button presses, key strokes or screen gestures required, just a basic tap of the phone on the NFC enabled transmitter gets the job done.

Alternatively, imagine gaining entry to a 24 hour gym (which is always locked) by simply tapping a Blackberry device to an electronic lock.

The possibilities are endless, which leaves a veil of mystery shrouding the future of NFC. Even so, it’s not hard to see that NFC technology has massive amounts of potential.

We tend to agree with RIM on this one, therefore we’d love to see more NFC technology implemented in real world scenarios. Hopefully RIM can convince enough businesses to take advantage of NFC  technology before the Blackberry 10 OS is ready to launch.

During the keynote, this morning, Research In Motion’s CEO, Thorsten Heins, gave an exclusive sneak peek at the new features of Blackberry 10. Oh boy, are we excited!

Judging by what we saw during the presentation it looks as if RIM has finally decided to use innovation in its newer Blackberry 10 OS. Of course, we are by no means saying that RIM wasn’t innovative in the past, but up until now, RIM has been set in its ways, which is rather evident by the company’s recent financial failures.

As Heins stated in the presentation, the new user interface of Blackberry 10 is “all about the flow.”

“We want a user paradigm that is easy and fast. The flow is taken to a new level in Blackberry 10. Everything flows continuously, it never stops, and because of that you just flow through it.”

“Applications run in realtime in the background. This means that apps run all the time, and never shut down, you can just flow through them.”

“With Blackberry 10, we are making you agile and nimble.”

RIM is remarkably confident that the new user interface and features of Blackberry 10 will lead to it’s success. We’re pretty confident too after seeing a demo, the Blackberry Dev Alpha device was responsive, fluid and innovative.

As is evident from the demos of BB10, the home screen UI is slightly similar to the panels seen on the Windows Phone OS. Users will have instant access to the most prominent features, including the infamous Blackberry universal inbox. All applications and tasks can be quickly swapped out utilizing the unique “Glance” feature.

The Blackberry 10 operating system will be available on all next generation Blackberry devices as well as the current gen Playbook (it will receive an OTA update). There’s been no confirmation whether or not older gen Blackberry devices will receive an update.

Unfortunately, both the hardware and software demoed during the keynote are not finished products which means design could change at any time.

For those of you who didn’t have the opportunity to catch the sneak peek that aired during the keynote, don’t you fret! We’ve got the Blackberry 10 sneak peak video below, as well as some images of the new OS in action.

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During the Blackberry World keynote this morning, Research In Motion’s CEO, Thorsten Heins, delivered an excellent presentation on the future of Blackberry and RIM. Don’t just take our word for it, take a look for yourself at some of the most memorable statements he made during his presentation. We’ll also provide a brief description behind each statement (where applicable), because we’re cool like that.

There were more than “150 different countries represented” at the Blackberry World keynote.

“I’m very excited to be here today, this is my first Blackberry World Event as CEO. Up until this year, I sat in the audience [during previous events].”

During the keynote, Heins briefly covered a few stats on the Blackberry mobile industry which were quite enlightening, to say the least.

“A total of 22% of smartphone users download and install apps, while a total of 34% of Blackberry users do the same.”

“There are 55 million Blackberry Messenger Subscribers”

During his presentation, Heins touched on the future of RIM and the rumors surrounding its more recent financial failures. He made it abundantly clear that the company is dedicated to both its own success and the success of its customers.

“Let me be clear, I’m here because I believe in the unique value Blackberry delivers to our customers every day.”

“When developing the Blackberry 10 platform we asked, “What is the unique value that Blackberry delivers?”

“Entertainment is important [on Blackberry platforms], but it’s not the only value.”

“The Blackberry platform enables 77 million people to succeed on a daily basis.”

“Blackberry is all about success. This is the core of Blackberry.”

“Behind success is a unique architecture.”

“We are totally committed to building our future experience and leverage on this unique architecture.”

Heins further stated that Blackberry users make up a distinct part of the mobile market.

“Blackberry is focused directly on Blackberry people.”

Blackberry 10 is RIM’s flagship product, and it will ultimately decide the success of the company. Throughout the entire keynote, there was an obvious confidence which arose from Heins when he discussed the Blackberry 10 mobile platform.

The new Blackberry 10 OS will be available on several different devices including Blackberry Mobile phones like the Blackberry 10 Dev Alpha device we previewed earlier, the Blackberry Playbook and any subsequent Blackberry devices.

“We made the hard choice to deliver our own mobile computing platform when deciding what platform to use.”

“We understand that you want key content on your Blackberry when we deliver those devices to you.”

“With Blackberry 10, we’re taking our time to make sure we get this right.”

“We’re dedicated to creating a more productive and responsive platform.”