OS - Tag Archive

What is the future for RIM?

1 Reply Katerina

The BlackBerry 7 smartphoneBlackBerry phones are thought to be among the safest in the world. Almost all politicians use them. But nevertheless, RIM has reported a very big drop in sales and revenues (about 40%) in comparison with the previous year, and this tendency has been observed for several years already. Besides, the release of new Blackberry 10 has been delayed up to the beginning of 2013, the sales of Blackberry 7 isn’t at the levels wanted, the company has to cut up to five thousand job places. The chain of total misfortunes has followed RIM for the past time. So, many specialists say that Blackberry is dying. Is it so? What can RIM do to improve its prospects?

Today RIM has several possible solutions, but all of them require total change in company’s work and specialization. And here they are:

  1. Licensing RIM software to other companies. One of the possible ways for RIM to get out of the crisis is to let other companies to use its Blackberry operation system. It may lead to the increase of the popularity of the OS (just like it was with Android) when people will get a chance to choose among different hardware solutions.
  2. Sale or license of the patents. It may be a good variant to let other corporations to use the patents, but it won’t make any contribution to innovative development of RIM what can lead to the further drop of the positions. It may happen just because money isn’t the most important thing in mobile development today; it is more for innovations in this sphere. Who is smarter gets more profit.
  3. Focus on hardware development. It is quite opposite solution to the first one mentioned. As a variant RIM can start developing good hardware with installing some other operating systems, like Android or Windows Mobile (the latter would be more reasonable as the number of manufacturers that develop phones for Windows Mobile isn’t very big now and the niche isn’t taken yet).
  4. Selling of RIM. Of course, it is the worst variant of all, but if there are no changes in the situation, the owners will have to do it. However, it would mean the end of Blackberry as a trend.

No matter what decision is taken, the era of great changes for everyone who is somehow connected to RIM is coming. Let’s hope that these changes will be for good and we will see Blackberry phones in top 5 of best-selling phones in the world accompanied by iOS, Android and Windows Mobile phones.

Steve Jobs – remembering a legend

20 Replies Christopher Roberts

Steve Jobs, co-founder, chairman and chief executive of Apple – one of the biggest, most profitable and most well known brands around the world.

Unfortunately, yesterday, Steve Jobs has passed away, aged 56.

Many believe that Apple is where it is because of this remarkable man, and say that without him, Apple would most probably have failed many years ago.

Jobs was a one of the kind sort of man. He was for many years the face of Apple, as it seemed that nobody could ever really match his charisma, innovation or genius.

When the firm was struggling in the 1990’s, Jobs returned, and saved the business, setting it on its path to become the second most widely used global operating system.

In 2003 Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He took leave three times between 2003 and 2010, before finally resigning as CEO in August 2011, because of fears over his health.

Jobs was one of the richest men in the world when he died, and was also one of the most well known and influential people of modern times.

It is said that Apple’s marketing department used to consisted of Jobs looking in his mirror and asking himself what he wanted.

Apple’s competitor Google has paid tribute to Jobs on the home page of its global search engines.

Google's Tribute to Steve JobsThe link on Google’s home page leads to Apple’s homepage, which has a tribute to its maker, which takes up the entire page – just showing how important he was to the company.

Apple's tribute to Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs on the home page of Apple, as a tribute to the man who many believe made the company a success

If you click on his picture, you are taken to a page which pay’s tribute to the legend in the classic Apple way – a clear, white page, with just a paragraph of text paying tribute to him.

Apple's tribute paragraph to Steve Jobs

A paragraph featured on Apple’s site, paying tribute to Steve Jobs

Today the world has lost a great man, and has been left many unanswered questions.

Who will take over from Jobs? Will Apple now become just another technology giant, lacking in personality, eventually destined for decline and failure?

RIP Steve Jobs

Windows 8 is on the way!

27 Replies Christopher Roberts

I have recently upgraded to Windows 7, which is why I kind of wasn’t that pleased when Microsoft announced (early last week) that it was getting set to launch its next operating system, Windows 8, some time next year – probably around April.


At the Build developers’ conference in California, Microsoft unveiled the new operating system, (no doubt still in early beta stages) and gave us a sneak peak at to what is in store in the next version of Windows.

They stated that the core foundation of Windows 8 was Windows 7, but better! To quote Steven Sinofsky exactly, he said:

…everything that was great about windows 7, well we took that and we made it even better in Windowws 8!

Despite saying this, this version of Windows OS looks like it has had a dramatic overall.

Windows is currently under more pressure than ever before in its long, domineering history. In the past the cheap, affordable and compatible OS, always used to be Microsoft’s Windows. Now however Apple are putting increasing pressure on Windows, along with Google’s new attempt to bring down the giant of Windows in the form of Chrome OS.

Hence why Windows 8 seems to be dramatically different to all previous versions of Windows.

So what is going to be different? Well for starters, for the first time ever, a Windows OS will be compatible with low power ARM-designed processors.

Also, from the glimpses and comments that Microsoft have currently given us/made, it looks like Microsoft are attempting to make Windows a more ‘family friendly’ operating system, in that it’s more of a media based OS. This is probably done to try and steer away from the classical view of Windows in that it is an operating system designed primarily for spreadsheets, documents and other work/business related tasks.

Windows 8 Start Screen

A glimpse at the probably new start screen design for Windows 8

In addition to this, Windows 8 will support touchscreen devices, possible Microsoft’s way of saying “get ready for Windows Tablet guys!” who knows.

Microsoft knows that it has to pull something pretty special out of the bag this time, or it could seriously loose its foot in the computing market, not only due to the increased competition, but also because users are slowly moving away from desktops and laptops, and towards smart phones and tablets.

That’s pretty much all the information I have at the moment, however no doubt we will have loads of updates on Technology Bloggers for you, as soon as we find out more about this new OS 🙂

What do you think and hope for with Windows 8? Do you speculate that it will be another Vista – i.e. slow and laggy, incompatible, riddle with bugs, and hated by many tech gurus, or will it be like Vista to 7, a breath of fresh air?