Research In
Motion (RIM) announced the launch of BlackBerry BBX, its next generation mobile
platform that takes the best of the BlackBerry platform and the best of the QNX
platform to connect people, devices, content and services.

RIM also
announced a series of developer tool updates, including WebWorks for BlackBerry
smartphones and tablets, the Native SDK for the BlackBerry PlayBook and a
developer beta of BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 with support for running Android
applications.

RIM also
provided direction for developers on how to best develop and monetize their
BlackBerry applications for today and for the future.

“With
nearly 5 million BlackBerry apps downloaded daily, our customers have made
BlackBerry one of the most profitable platforms for developers,” said Mike
Lazaridis, president and Co-CEO at RIM.

“At
DevCon today, we’re giving developers the tools they need to build richer
applications and we’re providing direction on how to best develop their
smartphone and tablet apps as the BlackBerry and QNX platforms converge into
our next generation BBX platform,” Lazaridis added.

BBX is the
next generation platform for BlackBerry smartphones and tablets. It combines
the best of BlackBerry and the best of QNX and is designed from the ground up
to enable the powerful real-time mobile experiences that distinguish BlackBerry
products and services.

The BBX
platform will include BBX-OS, and will support BlackBerry cloud services and
development environments for both HTML5 and native developers. BBX will also
support applications developed using any of the tools available today for the
BlackBerry PlayBook including Native SDK, Adobe AIR/Flash and WebWorks/HTML5,
as well as the BlackBerry Runtime for Android Apps on future BBX-based
tablets and smartphones.

Developers
who want to support both existing smartphones (running BlackBerry 6 and
BlackBerry 7 OS) and BlackBerry PlayBook tablets can monetize apps on both
platforms today with BlackBerry WebWorks, which supports apps built on HTML5,
CSS and JavaScript.

The
BlackBerry WebWorks APIs are supported by the Ripple Emulator, a standalone,
high-fidelity browser-like emulation tool that allows developers to test and
debug their applications on multiple platforms and devices without having to
compile or launch simulators.

By
Telecomlead.com Team
editor@telecomlead.com