Research In Motion is holding its big event right now, BlackBerry World 2011, and some interesting things have already come out. First, RIM is entering into a rather pervasive partnership with Microsoft to make Bing the default through all levels of the BlackBerry operating system (includig the QNX-based one). Second, the first piece of videographic evidence of Android applications running on the PlayBook.
The demonstration of Android applications running on the PlayBook looked pretty impressive, and reminded me of the work Benoit Schillings – the man, the legend – is doing with Alien Dalvik. The applications demonstrated ‘just work’; RIM did not have access to their source code (but did get permission to use them in demonstrations), and yet, the applications still ran inside the Android Player (as it’s officially called).
The applications in question can be installed from the BlackBerry App World once the Android Player goes live, and will act and behave just like regular applications on the PlayBook. Standard PlayBook gestures are used for Android’s home and menu button, while the back button is emulated on screen. It all seems relatively smooth to me, and considering people do not seem to have any issues with the incredibly amount of UI inconsistency between iOS applications and between Android applications, I don’t think users will care here.
The bigger announcement during BlackBerry World 2011 is that of the partnership between RIM and Microsoft, in which Bing will become the default search provider on all BlackBerry phones as well as on the PlayBook. Steve Ballmer appeared on stage at BlackBerry World to announce the news, and it’s also on the Bing Blog.
“Blackberry devices will use Bing as the preferred search provider in the browser, and Bing will be the default search and map application for new devices presented to mobile operators, both in the United States and internationally,” writes Microsoft’s Matt Dahlin, “Also, effective today Bing will be the preferred search and maps applications with regular, featured placement and promotion in the BlackBerry App World carousel. Bing is also now shipping as the default search experience, and map app, for the newly released BlackBerry Playbook.”
This is actually good news, since more competition is sorely needed in the search market. I prefer Google over Bing, although I must say, on my Windows Phone 7 device, Bing is doing just fine. Still, despite my preference, competition is good for consumers, so anything that challenges Google’s dominance is welcome.
Microsoft won’t be suing RIM for violating any of its patents. Funny how that works. All in the name of innovation, though.
(…) and was considering getting one myself until it was announced that Bing was the only “thing” (because it’s not a search engine) on it, a lot like Windows Phone 7 Series (yeah, I know that the name has changed, but it’s only slightly less stupid).
For us brazillians, Bing means getting the right search result at least on number 5-6 – that if it’s even on the first page.
I’m under the impression that Microsoft has not bothered to update the search crawler behind Bing from its Windows Live Search days for us here. Bing Maps also won’t return decent results, with searches for specific mall adresses returning places at least 750 km away from the wanted destination. Google Maps finds those and sugests them to me before I type the 6th letter.
The thing is, we’re a country with 74 million internet users, which is kind of something, and I’m not willingly giving a single cent to Microsoft until they decide to step their game up. No Xbox games, no Office for Mac (which has always sucked), no Bing, no Android phones coming from HTC (you get the picture). I’m not citing WP7 phones here because they haven’t bothered to launch them on a country with 210 million phone lines – obviously a smart move.
I also encourage others in similar discontent with Microsoft to do so as well.
Being able to run Android applications isn’t going to save this device. If I want to run Android apps, I’ll buy an Android tablet.
I imagine the first Android application users will install is AN EMAIL CLIENT!
I imagine the push to run Android apps is more so Android Developers don’t have to port their applications to another device. Well stocked application stores are a hot commodity at the moment, zero extra coding and cost to publish on Blackberry tablets makes it much easier for a developer to make that decision.
Also known as “The OS/2 effect”…
The ability for OS/2 to run Windows 3.1 was a string selling point. Also, it ran DOS applications better than DOS (and you could even pick which version of DOS to run it under). The problem occurred when Microsoft decided to not license 32-bit Windows to IBM. I definitely would have stayed on OS/2 if it could have run 32-bit apps. Win 95 was horribly undstable, and 98 wasn’t much better.
Sure, but what I meant was that if the PlayBook runs Android applications, there is a risk that developers only develop for Android. And Android applications are not standard, so Google can voluntarily break compatibility in future Android versions.
This in turn means that Alien Dalvik is weak when facing two threats :
-Rapidly evolving Android API (the core problem with Wine is that they’re playing catch-up with something they know nothing about until it’s released on the market.)
-Google invoking some patent on Android apps.
I don’t know how popular RIM products will be, but not owning the main API for application development does not sound like a safe way to go.
It is also a stab in the heart and a spit in the face of third-party developers and enterprise customers loyal to RIM over these years.
It is clear that the playbook had an unrealistic product development schedule. It launched with only a god-awful Adobe Air based API and a “html widget” API with which to create applications, no email client, the list goes on.
So RIM thinks it will make up this deficiency by running Android apps. What about all those Blackberry apps both consumer and running behind the firewall? Oh yes, we will create a “player” for those too.
Release schedule for Android apps: within 3 months.
Release schedule for Blackberry apps: maybe by the end of the year.
Still no native SDK so we could roll our own compatibility layer to make use of all this legacy code, no Java SDK, seriously is there any better way to tell the developers of your platform to go fuck off than that?
RIM is finished, cooked, over. They fired their head of Marketing (rightly) last month, their co-CEOs/should have been forced out when they both were found ripping off the company by back-dating stock options. Now they are running the company into the ground.
Have made some smart acquisitions in the last year, TAT, QNX to shore up the failures of their internal talent but if the Playbook is any sign of how they plan to manage them in the future, the company is doomed.
Hey, that Playbook could be a Nokia product
Nice hardware, awesome OS internals, but some serious issues with the highest layers (UI for Nokia, bundled software and SDK for RIM).
Hope RIM won’t go the same way as Nokia. It’s sad to see the phone/tablet industry gradually going the same way as the PC market : shrinking diversity, only the dullest products keep a significant market share…
NetBSD (xBSD for that matter) runs Linux applications through system call emulation. Linux (and xBSD for that matter) runs Windows applications through WINE or Virtual machines.
Clearly, the OS to run in this race is NetBSD, since it is free and can run _everything_ listed from the top level. Yet, when you want to run Skype or Flash on NetBSD, the best you can get is a Linux binary. In order to run Windows applications on NetBSD, you spin up a VM or run WINE.
The ability to run another OS’s applications certainly means that there will be less incentive to build native applications even if it is a superior product.
Why are you surprised? Android is identical (for the sake of lawsuits, lets say nothing more
to Java, and Java already does this.
The problem is with applications that make use of the NDK (C and C++).
Specially because not all mobiles use exactly the same architecture.
Dalvik is like JavaVM. Android is more like iOS or Windows. It’s not really like Java at all – especially when you factor in native extensions of Android apps (many games are compiled with Android NDK for example).
Well google could need some competition I really agree to that Thom
, but please not more Microsoft… MS is destroing whatever they touch. I hate them for what they do to file standards e.g.
I was helping somebody with MS-publisher today. It would not accepting saving to pdf.. ps was ok, but not without shoving it up som printerarse… Sad thing is user will continue using this sht because she is used to ms and getting screwed by ms, and even paying for it.
Until now google have been playing pretty nice compared too apple, sco ms.. I just wish there were another company like google competing making good products.
Until MS start using real open formats and making progress because of good software and products and not bullying and making a format mess imposing their standards, ill hate them with passion.
The one and only reason Google plays “pretty nice” is because they mostly don’t “sell” products. They’ve leveraged their position in the search market to sell advertising and they aggregate other people’s products and services. Any “products” Google do actually sell are well and truly subsidised by their advertising income, because in just about every case it gives them another avenue to generate advertising income.
When selling something that’s tangible is a secondary business that is just there to further your primary business, it’s pretty easy to “play fair”. If they had everything on the line like the other companies mentioned I can guarantee they would be using all the same methods being employed by those companies to protect their business.
And for searches I use secure Scroogle – Google results without the tracking and advertising.
…but you don’t use Scritunes. Oh wait, because it cannot possibly exist. Funny.
Always the same with you: it’s okay for advertising company Apple to track me. It’s not okay for advertising company Google to track me.
Edited 2011-05-03 22:57 UTC
I totally agree with you : company whose products are their main source of money are fundamentally bad, because the way the market currently works forces them to maximize income at the detriment of ethics and product quality.
You just fail to take this idea to its logical conclusion, which was the OP’s point : we need more companies whose main source of income is only indirectly linked to their products. Like google.
Not having to care about being profitable is the main reason why public research has in many occasions gone way further than private one in fundamental fields with no direct application, despite having significantly less money at hand. It is really a good thing.
Edited 2011-05-04 07:13 UTC
I think you fail to understand Google. Or perhaps I do and would be glad to be shown differently but it seems to me that every one of Google’s products is directly related to its main source of revenue: ads.
Their goal is to enter into any market where consumer eyes or ears consume content to ensure they can slap an ad on it. Their method for dominating those markets is to force the value of existing products to zero or near-zero in those markets by leveraging their dominance in search.
Not quite, at least if I consider the part of their products which I know of :
-Search : Formerly a limited amount of ads, now none. That won’t make me use it again though, I think that their UI has gradually become way too crowded in the past few months, and I don’t feel comfortable with giving so much personal data to a company which does not have a “we’ll be doing nothing with it not touchy” written policy.
-Translate : Only ads about google products, no benefit for them.
-Youtube : Yeah, lots of ads, which grow in number and intrusiveness with time. This sucks. But hey, video storage and encoding comes at a significant cost for them too…
-Blogger : No mandatory ads, ads are disabled by default. It’s the blog’s admin who decides to enable them if he wants some money.
-Maps : Some textual ads.
-GMail : A number of ads, but you can fully avoid them if you constantly use IMAP+Thunderbird like me. Contrary to many other free email services, GMail doesn’t put crap at the end of the messages you send.
-Scholar : No ads.
-Google Green initiatives ( http://www.google.com/green/innovations.html ) : Hmmm… I don’t think you can put an ad on that.
Sure, ads are Google’s main source of revenue, but ironically they only make light use of them on their own services. I think where Google makes most money is on ads which other websites use to fund themselves : nearly half of the ads which I see everyday have the Google logo on them. Also, maybe Youtube ads are profitable now, but last time I heard Youtube was still operated at a loss (was a long time ago though, when Google acquired it).
If you have proof of the contrary, please show it to me.
Edited 2011-05-04 15:42 UTC
RIM QNX, Playbook, BBOS7
HP Palm WebOS
Apple iOS
Microsoft Windows Phone Series 7 (on smartphones)
Microsoft Windows 8 (on tablets)
DoCoMo
Barnes and Noble – Nook Color
Whatever Amazon is cooking up
Android (itself is fractured – it’s good, don’t believe the hype)
HTC (yeah, they deserve their own line, the other handset makers)
Symbian
MeeGo
etc. (there are more, I just can’t think of them all)
There’s a ton of fun stuff going on in the market, even if some of them are starting exiting stage left. Google is far from the only one making new products. Heck, they didn’t even make Android. They bought it, and it’s based on Linux.
I think what ‘andih’ probably meant are products like search and docs
Was anyone there at BBW who can provide details or was able to ask questions regarding the microsoft Bing partnership?
As it stands now, the carriers have the freedom to configure things like search, maps etc to their liking not RIM. For example, AT&T/Verizon as far as I can remember has excluded RIM’s own mapping solution with their own for-pay alternative. Install BB maps and on the next reboot of the phone and it was replaced with a link to Verizon navigator or whatever. It was a struggle to get Blackberry App World installed by default on these handsets in lieu of the carrier’s own app marketplaces.
How is that going to change with search? Are they talking about integrating internet search into the OS and application APIs and make Bing the sole provider of query results?
That seems to border on an anti-competitive practice.
Would appreciate any details anyone has to offer.