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BlackBerry maker Research In Motion, after disappointing shareholders, is working to assuage another group hard hit by the news that the long-delayed BlackBerry 10 platform wont be released until early 2013.
Alec Saunders, Research In Motions vice president of developer relations, wrote in a June 30 post on the Inside BlackBerry Developer Blog that RIM remains strongly committed to its developers.
Youve got businesses to run, rent to pay and investors to answer to, Saunders wrote. You are the folks who have skin in the game now, and arent just waiting for a new phone personally. We know this delay affects you, and were sorry.
During RIMs June 28 earnings call, CEO Thorsten Heins shared that the platforms release had to be pushed from late 2012 to early 2013. The integration of such a large volume of incoming code, he explained, would take more time than originally expected.
I will not deliver a product to the market that is ¦ anything less than an outstanding user experience with the quality I expect a BlackBerry product to have, Heins said in his opening remarks. There will be no compromise on this issue.
Heins went on to share that RIM had suffered a $518 million loss during the quarter, and to save money was cutting 5,000 jobs, roughly a third of its workforce.
Michael Finneran, president of dBrn Associates, believes that in that pummeling of bad news, the delay of BlackBerry 10 was the death blow.
RIM’s product line is simply not competitive. Even at its best, BlackBerry 10 would have challenges, as the initial devices were to be the first RIM smartphones without a keyboard, one of the features that had kept many of the remaining RIM fans loyal, Finneran wrote in a June 29 blog post on No Jitter. With Apple poised to introduce the iPhone 5 later this year and an ongoing torrent of Android devices pouring onto the market, this is the worst of all failings.
RIMs Heins, offering shareholders what good news he could, talked about how encouraged and excited the company is by the traction that BlackBerry 10 has received with developers and content partners. The company is currently hosting a 23-city BlackBerry 10 Jam World Toura series of daylong events acquainting developer communities with the ins and outs of BlackBerry 10that Heins said is sold out in London, Barcelona, Berlin, Toronto, Montreal, New York, Santa Clara and Singapore (though its difficult to imagine RIM turning anyone away).
Developers are excited by the Dev Alpha form factor, high-resolution display and the horsepower that allows for fast and powerful apps that can stream content quickly and easily, Heins went on, referring to RIMs upcoming smartphone. Developers have already embraced the BlackBerry 10 platform, showcasing apps at BlackBerry World in May, the camera integration, our first-in-class HTML5 browser and a social ability for apps beyond anything weve seen on a BlackBerry before.
With the hard work and enthusiasm of developers some of the only good news that RIM has to report, Saunders, in his post, begged them not to leave.
Over the last few months, the level of excitement, dedication and pride from our developer partners and from our employees has been both gratifying and humbling for me, he wrote.
My pledge to you is that we will continue to work with you, to invest with you, to create opportunities with you, to be successful with you, and to be worthy of the trust and support you have given us.
Follow Michelle Maisto on Twitter.