[cookie20]

With the launch of BB10 nearing I was thinking about it in relation to the launch of Windows 8 this week (which I've got and am now running). So with Windows 8, Microsoft are trying to close the gap between the OS's we use on our tablet, smartphone and PC and in to be honest it is quite nice albeit still early days. I wonder though, if BlackBerry were successful somewhat with the launch of their BB10 smartphones do you think it could be worth them, down the line of course, considering a run at a BB10 PC operating system.

We've seen them getting the BB10 OS ready for both smartphone and tablet use and the OS (in some form of QNX or another) is already very stable and widely used around the world in many different techs, so why not a push into the desktop/laptop world. I know this would require a lot of planets to align but lets say things were successful for BB10 and BlackBerry next year, would you be happy running a BB10 type OS on your PC? I think I would like the idea. Even if they integrated some virtual systems too to allow us to run windows on it if needed. I'd be happy for the system to run over the BlackBerry cloud and BlackBerry Appworld. I really think this would be a great idea. Thoughts anyone?

[mikeo007]

If it happens, it would be way down the road. Neutrino is crap for an every-day desktop OS, and a tablet OS is much too limited to be of use on a desktop.

The PC market is also an extremely low margin market (with the exception of maybe Apple), so I'm not sure if RIM would even be interested in competing in this space. Microsoft can do it because they already have ~90% of the market, so it's a value add for their customers.

[simu31]

The PC market is also an extremely low margin market (with the exception of maybe Apple)

I'm pretty sure that's the reason right there that they wouldn't go into the personal computer market - oh and I'm pretty sure that Apple isn't making money from it's computer section either.

Si.

[cookie20]

There would of course be a lot of work to do and I wouldn't mean necessarily that BlackBerry would pursue an apple style model but more likely focusing on the OS and then licencing. I dont necessarily agree that QNX wouldn't be great for every day use. In fact it would probably suit the people who want just to browse, watch videos and some desktop publishing.

[westcoastit]

I'm pretty sure that's the reason right there that they wouldn't go into the personal computer market - oh and I'm pretty sure that Apple isn't making money from it's computer section either.

Si.

Nah, Apple is making a tidy profit from their MacBook and desktop systems. There's a reason people talk about the Apple Tax -- Apple isn't competing in the bottomed out PC market and continues to sell premium devices at premium prices.

"Apple made a gross margin of $18.5 billion just in the last quarter. If you peel back the layers and look at how its different product lines contribute to this margin, you will find its MacBook lines account for $1.65 billion." Retina Display brightens Apple’s profits — Tech News and Analysis

[James Nieves]

Well we already have a surface, what else do you want???? QNX has a desktop version, it'll probably be put together cascades style just give BB10 some time to stand on it's feet first before it gets running

[anon(3879737)]

Assuming that the BlackBerry London is the Dev Alpha A/B and the Lisbon with its Snapdragon MSM8960 will be released as L-Series to end users, there is actually no need to have yet another machine running BlackBerry 10 just to do your everyday tasks like webbrowsing, email, videos etc. What else can you do with BB10 which will lack sophisticated desktop applications at and most probably way after launch?

The Snapdragon Pro CPU together with the Adreno GPU are more powerful than what I used to happily live with for a long time. I only upgraded because NFL Gamepass did not work flawlessly with my HDTV, but that's not even a problem for the PlayBook. With HDMI, USB OTG, and a couple of drivers for devices like keyboard, mouse and mass storage devices, you only need a docking station and a reasonable desktop shell to replace your desktop PC most of the time. Android (or rather Android vendors as Google killed Motorola's Webtop) will most probably go the same way with Ubuntu for Android (for a general discussion of this topic see this article). I personally like to interpret RIM's attempt to get KDE developers to port their Linux technologies as well as applications, which are mainly for desktop use atm, by giving away free PlayBooks as an indication for this strategy.

[anon(4018671)]

yeah with KDE and QT apps with the power of a real desktop underneath that would be sweet, I guess. But you'd have to ask yourself why. Linux already runs KDE and QT plus nobody needs to port apps. At least Linux has no idea what to do with a real-time kernel. So much infighting on direction even when they decide what features to support the kernel will never make everybody happy

BB10 hopefully will have something interesting to offer. Amarok or Krita are two that I'd like to use. But Krita would need a larger display maybe HDMI?