BlackBerry10 is coming, BlackBerry 10 is coming!

For months and months….and even more months after initial launch dates were shifted, BlackBerry has rode their advertising and social media horse heralding their return to former greatness like a modern day Paul Revere.

Now BB10 is no longer an illusion, but a reality. If you believe the hype, it’s a reality that is supposed to leave Mobile Device Management (MDM) vendors quaking in their “start-up’ booties at the Return of the King between the “supah  powah” of the device and the frightening features of the Fusion management console.

IT’S A BRICK AND DROWNING SLOWLY!

what-me-worry-alfred e neumanI work for a mobile device management company, but quite frankly I look at this announcement and grin like MAD Magazines’ Alfred E. Neuman. I can with certainty say, ‘What, me worry?”  because a device is a brick that makes phone calls. What transcends a phone from dumb as a brick to truly smart is the data management for the end-user and the productivity suites that turn that data into meaning for our feeble human minds. At the end of the day, mobility is about Apps (or HTML 5 crafted programs, but you get my drift).

I FIND YOUR FAITH IN LACK OF APPS DISTURBING

darth-vader-i-find-your-lack-of-APPS70,000. A big number for almost anything in this world…except Apps. But 70,000 is the current number of Apps sitting in BB World store.  Apple and Google tout millions. Now granted, with Android you’re playing a game of App Russian Roulette. Their open source mantra leaves the doors wide open for some old gamer guy sitting in his basement in the Ukraine to decry, “All Your Data Are Belong To Us,” but even that’s a fraction in the grand scheme of things. Apple’s walled garden as we all know is a safe-haven. Enterprise adoption proves the faith in the Apple closed-door approach. No need to say more.

Now going back to RIM’s new Red Rider BB gun that is supposed to slay all in its path, I think those that convert will in fact simply shoot their eye out. The pundits and analysts who get early previews to all things tech are saying out of the 70,000 Apps available about 50 that are worthwhile. Out of those 50 Apps, many have a Bird at the end of the title. Great for business, huh?

Compare this again to the Apple App store that has not only sectioned out games from productivity, but have also kindly partitioned those business Apps by verticals like Healthcare mobile productivity.

THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES BLACKBERRY

There once was a time in the early aught years of the new millennium when I found my BlackBerry a salvation from my truly stupid clamshell flip phone.  And most agreed with me, once IT anointed us we played gleefully with our awesome microscopic mouse roller balls in meeting after meeting. It was a new age, and BlackBerry ushered it in.

blackberry 10They lost their way though, and as people who didn’t mind carrying two devices came into the organization with their superior touch-screen swiping, we looked at our BlackBerrys like the carriers of the Ebola virus, only touching them when it was necessary to keep our jobs. And as the Apps continued to grow in other places, we cancelled our Crackberry news subscriptions in droves because who wants to be reminded (especially in email) how lacking they truly are.

BlackBerry is playing very nice with App developers because they realize this enormous blind spot. But will the App developers follow? Not if I was running the business. I would never divert time from something that might possibly maybe work versus the BIG TUNAS already rife for the taking.

Only time will tell, but history should be our guiding light lest we want to repeat the mistakes of the past.