[gabedabomb]

Is it just me, or is anyone else let down by what DevCon has revealed? (as observed by a non-developer)

- Started by talking about the tens of millions of BB users (presumably most of whom are smartphone users). Good.
- Went on to talk about the $$ that devs can make with BB apps, vs. developing for iOS. Am a bit suspect on the statistics, but anyway, I'm OK with the stated claims. Also stated was how many millions of apps are downloaded daily (5M?) Presumably, most of this is for phone users. OK.
- Went on to talk about a unified "BBX." This is promising.

But this is the point at which reality set in, and I see that at the core, little is going to be provided to Blackberry phone users, at least in the near term. Thereafter, everything discussed related to the development for the PLAYBOOK. Native SDK is for QNX/Playbook. Android porting is for the Playbook. While this isn't news necessarily, the fact that the general session is much about the Playbook development (which has yet to gain traction) while the RIM presenters freely quote the BB PHONE user base is misleading at best, and deceiving at worst. If in the near-term there continues to be the paths of a Tablet strategy vs a Phone strategy, with the Tablet getting the lion's share of resources, then RIM should be more clear in discussing those separately, rather than referring to the entire user base as being supporters of the "BlackBerry Platform." We're not. Only a small fraction of the tens of millions of BB users have a Playbook, and watching DevCon is frustrating to me, a phone user, because none of this is applicable. I understand the CEOs' may have a vision of having a phone do "core activities" and having a tablet do "everything else", but consumers today are expecting that their PHONE will do most everything they need. BlackBerry is struggling to compete in the PHONE segment, and to confound/muddle the DevCon general session, trying to appeal to developers by blending the phone user base (large, and desperate for developers' support) and the tablet base (nascent, and DOES NOT CURRENTLY have anywhere NEAR a large user base) was a frustrating experience. The developers DO know that all of this cool stuff is NOT going to reach 70M BB users [of phones], and that the top 13% that develop for the Playbook is probably not going to get $100K (statistics presented at the start), right?

[murnende]

You do understand that the PlayBook OS is being ported to phones, right? For all intents and purposes, the PlayBook is a development platform for future phones, including Android player and NDK. Why wouldn't they focus on BBX, rather than the obsolete BBOS?

[JasW]

I'm having a hard time understanding the title of this thread. In fact, I'm utterly confounded.

[gabedabomb]

I do understand. But what bugs me is RIM management leading on that there is "70M user base", when today most of that user base cannot support all the cool stuff the developers will be doing with all of these fine tools, since most of us don't have Playbooks. The "obsolete BBOS" IS what makes up most of the current user base. In the near-term, there's definitely a disconnect, in my mind, between what the users think of when we hear "BlackBerry Platform" and what RIM means when they say "BlackBerry Platform."

In other words, even if all the good developers in attendance nod and does everything RIM is suggesting, they won't have the immediate support of the majority of the BlackBerry user base; we're just not compatible at this point. I would feel bad for the developers, because until the phones catch up, it'll be like pushing on a string. I can see why RIM would want to muddle the two, but until BBX hits phones, to lure developers with the statistics they presented isn't quite fair.

[Blacklac]

I'm pretty sure DevCon for OS7 was last year, if that's your issue.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[gabedabomb]

I'm having a hard time understanding the title of this thread. In fact, I'm utterly confounded.

This may not be much better, but may be a bit more clear: "DevCon: RIM leverages 70M BB Phone User Base to Woo Playbook Developers to Create QNX Apps That Will Only Benefit a Small Fraction of that 70M Base in the Forseeable Near Future as BB Phones Chug Along Using OS7"

Maybe I'm being a bit facetious, but this is coming from a BB phone user that does not have a Playbook, and I'd imagine that's the case with most of BB's current user base.

[mithrazor]

I don't know for sure how this is gonna work. But I'm pretty sure downsizing the resolution of the PlayBook to a phone's size. Isn't gonna be too hard. It should be simple as repackaging Android app's for the App World.