The head of RIM in Russia answered the questions Nomobile.ru and habraludey

Teaser:
- Does it make any sense to develop under the BBK?
- Our AppWorld store is one of the most profitable for developers, according to the Evans Data Group, more than 13% of the creators of BlackBerry software have already earned more than 100 thousand dollars (for example, for iOS developers this figure is 1-2% - Nomobile comment .ru). And compared to Android, Blackberry apps bring their authors 40% more revenue (Vision Mobile data).

Full text - under the cut
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Recently at the DevCon Developer Conference, RIM made a small velvet revolution by introducing the new BBX mobile platform, which was created simultaneously based on the Blackberry OS and QNX. We contacted the operator manager for operators in Russia, Andrei Kiselev, who answered our questions, as well as readers' questions, sent to the social networks Twitter, Facebook and Habrahabr.

—In connection with the latest events and the BBX presentation, has the brand positioning changed, have you been moving away from corporate users towards the mass market?
- Actually, we have long been guided both by business people and the mass market. The new OS combines the best features of the mobile systems Blackberry and QNX, making the most of the hardware capabilities of iron. From Blackberry OS remains our proprietary protection, all corporate data is still securely encrypted, as well as a system of push-notifications. Separately, I would like to mention the most important element of the new system - Blackberry Balance, which allows you to isolate corporate data from private data in the same device, differentiate access rights. For example, you will not be able to copy corporate from your corporate email to your Gmail account.

—And why is this necessary?
- It will greatly help IT-directors to whom employees say: I do not want to use your corporate Blackberry smartphone, I have my own, set it up. The new system of delineation of rights will allow to protect data, to avoid leaks. However, this is not the only solution of this kind.

- Strange, but it seemed to me that the new platform was sharpened specifically for a wide audience - interface design, usability, functionality ...
- We continue to expand the audience at the expense of the mass market, we are interested in this market. And sure, ordinary BBX users will like it. The most important element of the new system is the unique user interface of the new level with the so-called cascade system. Thus, the photo gallery in BBX is implemented in an animated 3D view, and this is the standard Framework that allows developers to use this effect in their programs. The multitasking of QNX, which was not particularly evident in the Playbook, will be used to the fullest in BBX. The new OS added about a hundred libraries and several gaming frameworks, allowing you to create very serious three-dimensional games that use all the hardware features, such as two processor cores.



- What features will appear in new devices? Readers ask about video calls and other popular features.
- I can not comment on specific functions, but in BBX we embed the best of what is on the market today and in mobile technologies. This decision is not tactical, we are not focusing on the next year to show good performance in some quarter, but we are designing a mobile system for the next 10 years. This is the so-called Future Proof concept.

—What will happen to the already existing line-up of devices on the Blackberry 7 OS and your only QNX tablet?
- For the Playbook, OS2 update will be released soon, later it will be possible to upgrade to BBX. As for smartphones on the "seven", then, of course, we will support them, but the following devices will be released on the BBX. By the way, the launch of devices on the Blackberry 7 was the largest in the history of RIM, not only in the corporate, but also in the mass market. These smartphones are sold through more than 100 operators around the world, they are in great demand now, we have good sales dynamics, customers are satisfied with them. Devices on the "seven" will be in demand for several more years, I can firmly say, based on our previous experience.

- Is there anything known about the timing of launching devices on the BBX, and what kind of gadgets will it be?
- I will not say about the dates, but I know that next year you will be the first to see a smartphone and a tablet on BBX.

—A few questions in one about our Russian market. When, finally, will WiFi stop blocking, when will the Playbook start being sold, and when will prices for Blackberry devices in Russia become more sane?
- I just want to say that we have issues with regulatory authorities in each country, not only in the Russian Federation. We respect the laws of the country in which we work, and I am sure that all issues will be overcome, it just takes time. As for WiFi, there is an active work on unlocking it, I hope you will see the results soon. Now about the Playbook tablet: in Russia there is a clear interest in this gadget. But here, as in other countries, it is necessary that operators become interested in the product. There is no big activity yet, but I hope that everything will work out. Finally, about the prices. This is a very difficult question, there are a lot of factors related to taxes, agreements with partners and so on. Of course, we see the prices of the "gray" market. And we will focus on the realities of the market, its dynamics, we want the product to be adequate not only in terms of hardware, but also service and prices. We are working on it.



—Will BBM Music be working in Russia?
- Beat on painful points: the launch of BBM and the services running on it, along with the WiFi unlock, are our main problems in Russia. Few people know, but the number of BlackBerry Messenger users on BlackBerry around the world last year increased from 28 million to 50 million - an 80% increase. BBM is a kind of global mobile social network, where 70% of users use the service every day, sending billions of messages per month. At DevCon, we announced BBM Social, a platform for developers who can now actively embed BBM into other applications.

—There are rumors that Microsoft is going to acquire you. Especially rumors intensified after the recent problems with the servers.
- Rumors, we do not comment. Microsoft is one of our key partners, for example, we use their Bing mapping service in the Playbook and, apparently, it will remain in new products. Regarding problems with servers last week, but it so happened that for some reason the backup system did not turn on - I note that for 12 years of operation, RIM is the first problem of this magnitude, and for 18 months prior to this situation, the reliability level of our infrastructure was evaluated as the highest, 99.97%. We are now conducting a full audit of our entire infrastructure in order to optimize and increase reliability.

—The new Playbook firmware was promised, in which Russian services will be supported.
- OS2 for the Playbook is coming out soon, including localization, more Russian-language programs. I still can not tell the details.

—Is the built-in mail client appear in it?
- Yes.

—Developers complain about complicated access to the SDK, there is no public testing policy, you cannot get to the Beta Zone from Russia ...
- At the same DevCon was announced a new program for developers, greatly simplifying the work with Blackberry. If earlier they had to register as developers for downloading the SDK, then now it is not necessary to do this, registration is needed only for publication in AppWorld. We invite all Russian developers to go to the site developer.blackberry.com and evaluate for themselves how much we have simplified the work with the toolkit. This section has been completely redesigned, the concept of forums has been simplified, there is an open demo area for communication. We also announced a free service for testing - before uploading applications to AppWorld, you can check on the website how the application will work on any of the Blackberry smartphones; to do this, you don’t need to have them all alive.

- What should developers write for a new platform?
- In fact, on anything, let them use the technologies they are used to. The same games can be written even in C ++, they are perfectly compiled by the system. I highly recommend to pay attention to the development on HTML5, we have this language supported better than on any other system, and we are not only talking about the browser. BBX uses hardware accelerated HTML5 graphics. By the way, according to our data, now 75% of application creators are working or are going to work on HTML5. If you do something on HTML5, this is a guarantee that the program will work both on the smartphone and on the tablet.

—How about porting programs with Android?
- Android applications can be ported right now, there are Android Runtime libraries on the Playbook, and some developers are porting programs in half an hour, it is not difficult. On the BBX, of course, this will also be implemented.

—And does it make any sense to develop under the BBK?
- Our AppWorld store is one of the most profitable for developers, according to the Evans Data Group, more than 13% of the creators of BlackBerry software have already earned more than 100 thousand dollars (for example, for iOS developers this figure is 1-2% - approx. ). And compared to Android, Blackberry apps bring their authors 40% more revenue (Vision Mobile data).

Link on the topic: who missed, here, on a habr, I posted my text and video review of the last flagship on the Blackberry OS 7 - Bold 9900, which I have been using for more than 3 months.

If someone still has questions for RIM or BB9900 - ask here or me on twitter @turubar , we have very good contact with the Russian office