Research In Motion, trying to pull out of a sales slump, moved a step closer to the debut of a new BlackBerry smartphone by releasing as many as 2,000 prototypes to developers.
The touch-screen devices, which have a 4.2-inch display and resemble a scaled-down version of the PlayBook tablet, are being distributed today to developers at RIM’s BlackBerry Jam event in Orlando, Florida.
The prototypes lack the physical keyboard that has been a hallmark of most BlackBerrys.
“What we’re doing is giving them hardware they can build on, so they can feel confident that the work that they do, the behaviour they see on their applications, will carry forward on to the launch hardware,” said Christopher Smith, a vice-president at RIM.
The BlackBerry 10 is the linchpin of RIM’s strategy to revive growth. Sales fell 25 per cent last quarter, with US revenue down over 50 per cent. The old BlackBerry, best-suited for email, had struggled to keep up with the web capabilities and apps of Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android devices. – (Bloomberg)
