RIM presented BB10, but still keeping some secrets to ourselves, says RIM´s CEO.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesús.

RIM presented BB10, but still keeping some secrets to ourselves, says RIM´s CEO.

Thorsten Heins, president and CEO of RIM, used his presentation at today’s BlackBerry World event to showcase the company’s new BlackBerry 10 platform – but details about the full commercial launch were still scarce.

While the executive said that “I am confident we will be there later this year,” he also said that the troubled smartphone vendor is “still keeping some secrets to ourselves.” And although the company conducted its demonstration using hardware which will be made available to its developer community, it was noted that this is not the final device which will be made available to consumers.

While RIM had previously said that it would launch its first BlackBerry 10-powered device later this year, in the interim the company has struggled to maintain its position with its now end-of-life BlackBerry 7 platform. In its most recent results call, Heins said the company will “aggressively incentivise” this product line, in order to look to stem its market share losses and drive upgrades from existing BlackBerry users.

Prior to Heins taking on the CEO role with the company, the previous incumbent, Mike Lazaridis, attributed the launch timetable to the wait for “critical chipsets” to become available. Heins has noted the lack of an LTE device has impacted RIM’s premium portfolio in its core North American markets.

In the BlackBerry 10 demonstration, Heins detailed the ability of the platform to offer enhanced text input capabilities in devices without the company’s signature keypad – indicating that its focus with this platform is full-touch devices, at least initially. The executive said: “even on a full touch device, BlackBerry is still about typing and getting things done.”

Also highlighted was the integrated nature of the company’s platform. “We believe that to deliver a compelling offering to you out there, we need to combine fantastic software and hardware with cloud services,” he argued, describing the typical BlackBerry customer as “hyperconnected.”

Reiterating comments made during his appearance at the BlackBerry DevCon Europe earlier this year, Heins attempted to position BlackBerry 10 as more than a device OS. “This is a new, revolutionary mobile computing engine we have built,” he said.

Related posts:

BlackBerry Developers Alpha device has no home button and looks like an .....

Blackberry World 2012: BB 10: Camera app, Keyboard, Developers Alpha Device, Multitasking Videos

Video: Blackberry 10 first look.

RIM launches BlackBerry 10 OS

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesús.

RIM launches BlackBerry 10 OS.

Based on PlayBook OS, BlackBerry 10 was unveiled at the BlackBerry World conference in Orlando, Florida. 

For the time being, developers can download a toolkit for native and HTML5 software development, which will soon be available for download here. 

Although RIM announced the availability of these SDKs, the download links are not live yet, so developers might want to wait a few more hours before they become available.

According to RIM, the new toolkit offered to all devs who wish to create apps for the newly announced platform, includes the Blackberry 10 Native SDK with Cascades, which allows developers to submit graphically rich and high performance native apps in C/C++ using Qt. 

It is also worth mentioning the Native SDK for BlackBerry 10 comprises a range of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that enables devs to access core device features and a range of BlackBerry apps services, including Push and Payment services. 

With Cascades native application development toolset, developers will be able to easily create visually rich apps without having to write “complex, low-level graphics code.”

Furthermore, this toolkit also includes support for HTML5 application developers with the BlackBerry 10 WebWorks SDK.

Each developer attending to BlackBerry 10 Jam will be provided with a BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha device that has already been pictured a few days ago. RIM also confirmed that the first BlackBerry 10 devices would be released in the latter part of 2012, probably in October.

“Developers building for BlackBerry 10 will be able to easily create the kind of cutting-edge apps that deliver truly engaging experiences and ‘wow’ customers, whether through integration with native features and other apps like BBM or by leveraging the new signature design elements of this new and powerful mobile computing platform,” said Alec Saunders, vice president, Developer Relations and Ecosystems Development.