RIM BlackBerry 6 OS, Browser Debut at WES

by Clint Boulton

RIM Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis took the stage around 8:45 a.m. and rattled off a number of impressive stats: 10.5 million devices sold last quarter and 37 million BlackBerry smartphones in 2009, with the BlackBerry community cracking the 41-million-user mark.

Lazaridis says while 41 million users is nice (Apple’s iPhone has sold more than 50 million units), he expects to first double that number and then crack 100 million users. How will RIM do this? BlackBerry 6 and the new browser, of course!

Before WES, BlackBerry 6 was billed as a play to bring the platform up to speed with modern user experiences popularized by the iPhone and smartphones based on Google’s Android OS. Was the speculation correct? See below!

People think of BlackBerry as the enterprise messaging platform and they’re right … to this point. BlackBerry 6 appears very media-intensive, with RIM showing off the platform to the hip-hop beats of “Boom Boom Pow” by the Black Eyed Peas.

The apps feature easy scrolling on this touch interface, much like what we’ve come to expect from the iPhone and devices such as the Motorola Droid and the Nexus One. In addition, multitouch, kinetic scrolling and pinch to zoom all seem par for the course.

The Web browsing looks great, fortified by a new WebKit-based mobile browser RIM set to work on when it acquired Torch Mobile in August 2009.

Social media apps such as Facebook and Twitter, refurbished menus and a new look for BlackBerry messaging are all part of the mix.

Black Eyed Peas recording artist Will.i.am then came up to pump up the BlackBerry crowd, describing how important his BlackBerry is for his work and play. Who knew the leading enterprise phone provider had such street cred?

Lazaridis also showed off the three new BlackBerry devices unveiled here April 26: from left to right, the petite Pearl 3G, the new, white Bold 7000 and the Bold 9650.

The RIM BlackBerry partner collective runs deep and wide, with Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, IBM, Cisco Systems and newfangled Web companies such as Salesforce.com joining in.

For example, HP is now offering three-click printing from BlackBerry devices.