BlackBerry 10 updates unveiled

Last night at the BlackBerry Jam Americas conference in San Jose, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins, revealed more of the core features of the forthcoming BlackBerry 10 operating system, including navigational “Flow”” and inbox “”Peek””.

Last night at the BlackBerry Jam Americas conference in San Jose, RIM (Research In Motion) President and CEO Thorsten Heins announced a number of updates to the BlackBerry 10 developer platform and an updated Dev Alpha B testing device to meet demand from developers building apps for the platform. RIM also revealed an increase in itsuser base to approximately 80 million, a new milestone of 60 million BBM subscribers and 60 million users of the Facebook app for BlackBerry.

Thorsten Heins’ keynote can be watched here.

Enhanced user experience

At the core of BlackBerry 10 is Flow, a new kind of mobile user experience that removes the ‚’in and out’ experience of applications to enable the user to flow through applications. While the Peek feature means that a glimpse of the BlackBerry 10 unified inbox is only a swipe away without leaving an app. It’s a new approach designed to put the user in control and simplify busy lives not slow them down.

New BlackBerry App World

BlackBerry 10 will see an all-new BlackBerry App World storefront, providing access to games, apps, music and videos, all using a single BlackBerry ID. BlackBerry has secured premium app and media partners including Facebook, Twitter, foursquare and Gameloft for BlackBerry 10.

BlackBerry 10 in enterprise

BlackBerry 10 will maintain BlackBerry’s heritage in enterprise at both the user and enterprise level. The unified inbox (email and social), plus integration between a users contacts and calendar and their social networks is intended to meet the needs of the most prolific business communicators. While the integration of BlackBerry Balance technology will keep personal and corporate apps and data separate (and secure) but enable users to transition seamlessly between personal and work activity. RIM also confirmed BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10, which will let businesses manage BlackBerry, iOS and Android devices from a single console.

Opening doors for developers

RIM continues to drive developer engagement with BlackBerry 10, releasing a series of updates to developer tools and a new Dev Alpha B testing device. This includes Beta 3 of the BlackBerry 10 Native SDK and a new BlackBerry 10 WebWorks SDK release. With increased developer and user engagement, BlackBerry App World continues to go from strength to strength with more than one billion app downloads in the last five months driving revenue for developers. According to Vision Mobile, BlackBerry developers generate, on average, 4% more revenue per app/per month than iOS developers, and about 40% more revenue than Android developers. BlackBerry App World has more paid downloads per month than the Android market. (Yankee Research Group).

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