XcelaMobile Beyond Apps

As I write this post I suddenly start to wonder why is Research in Motion (RIM) is still Research in Motion? What are they still researching? Are they a lab? Consumers don’t know that name. They know BlackBerry. Isn’t it about time they changed the legal name of the company to BlackBerry, Inc? But I digress…

In general, it’s about time that RIM transitioned the original founders out of the company. They were innovative..in 1999. I remember when I first saw the original BlackBerry pager. It was at Microsoft’s launch of Active Directory and Exchange 2000 and it was probably 1999, maybe 2000. The device – essentially a pager that could receive email – was revolutionary at the time. Even while Palm was selling Pilots like no tomorrow BlackBerry gave people a taste of wireless messaging.

Fast forward 12 years and we are in a different world. Palm is long gone along with a slew of mediocre Windows Mobile phones (I am secretly rooting for WinMo 7 and Nokia). Our world is now filled with iPhones, iPads, Connected TVs, and a…slew… of Android devices on the market.

Consumers are also looking for “the” solution to help them with their daily connected lives. Today there are two top platforms – iOS and Android. While Apple and Google have been winning market share one has to wonder about BlackBerry. Where does it fit in?

RIM has always been focused on the hardware, which unfortunately lags behind the competition by many years. The software has been mostly ignored. And they have not won over developers because realistically, who wants to develop around what seems to be a moving target? So by letting hardware innovation lapse and practically no focus on software its hard to imagine how this ship can be turned around before it sinks into the abyss of failure.

RIM’s only hope is focus on very few products – perhaps 2 or 3 at the most – and hit it out of the park. Time is not on their side. They probably have the technical people to make it happen, but given that the only major change has been the CEO it could turn into a situation of the old guard still hanging on to failed products and roadmaps. Considering RIM’s significant presence in large companies and the government it would be unthinkable for RIM to fail.

Alex Zaltsman

Just on a whim I did a Google search on TourSpot (the predecessor to Xcela) and found this video of the prototype for the original TourSpot app – on the original iPhone!

Take a look below. This brings back many memories of a really fun project that was way ahead of its time. Though the screens are mockups we had a blast putting it together.

The Original TourSpot application

An interesting question came up while in a conversation with a customer about which Android devices they should purchase for their staff. They were about to purchase about 500 devices and needed guidance about the upgrade path for the Android devices they were seeking to purchase.

So this is a serious issue for the Android platform. In the world of Apple iOS the updates are distributed by the operating system vendor (Apple). But in the world of Android those updates are pushed down by the carrier. And each carrier has to develop their own image. So just because you purchased the latest and greatest Android device it doesn’t mean that it will receive a new version of the Android OS.

The latest Android smartphone platform is Gingerbread, which is version 2.3. The next major revision is called Ice Cream Sandwich, and will be numbered version 4 (Google skipped 3 because  it was released only for tablets). So if you buy a 2.3 device today will you be able to upgrade to 4.0? Not necessarily.  One vendor, Motorola, openly discloses which devices will receive Ice Cream Sandwich, as stated in this News.com article.

Bottom line – Check with the vendor first before investing in an Android platform. If you need the upgradeability of the OS check the upgrade path for the device you are purchasing.

XcelaMobile has expertise in mobile app integration with travel, healthcare, government, retail and enterprise industries.