After almost 9 years fighting it out, Nokia and Research in Motion reached a settlement. The announcement came on December 21, ending the long lawsuit over Nokia’s WLAN patents (wireless networking technology).

The new agreement brought an end to all patent litigation between the two companies in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Germany. But for Research in Motion, peace and love came at a steep price. Furthermore, RIM was forced to pay a one-time payment of 50 million euros or $65 million.

Unfortunately for RIM, the settlement comes at a time where the American Dollar is much weaker than the Euro. With market share continuing to fall towards 0% and no true profits in sight, what else could go wrong for Blackberry?

According to CNET, Nokia’s WLAN patents were not the only ones that were violated:

Nokia patents that had been cited in lawsuits against RIM touched on a number of technologies including the following, according to the SEC filing: power consumption in a mobile station; a network activation service scheme using point-to-point short messaging service; and a security improvement scheme for packet-mode transmission in a mobile communication system.

-CNET

Do you think that Research in Motion and Blackberry will ever recover? Does this settlement mark the end of Blackberry forever? Let us know in the comments below.

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Research in Motion has announced a virtual event called Android Port-A-Thon. The idea here is to get developers to port their Android apps over to BlackBerry 10 and RIM is willing to pay you to do it. For every paid app that is successfully ported and approved, RIM will pay you a cool sum of $100. That’s per app, up to a maximum of 20 apps per vendor.

Furthermore, if you port at least five apps, you’ll be entered into a drawing to win a BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha Device. They have 100 of those to give away. Every eligible app that you submit over that minimum of five will net you one extra entry in this draw. So, if you hit that maximum of 20 apps above, you’ll earn yourself $2,000 and 16 entries into the Dev Alpha Device draw.

The BlackBerry Developer Blog has more details, including how you can go about with the app porting process from Android. There are links to guides and tools and such. Android Port-A-Thon starts on January 11, 2013 at 12pm EST and runs for 36 hours. You must log in and port during that time to net the rewards.

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During a press conference earlier today, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins made the formal announcement that all the current BlackBerry 7 smartphones on the market today will not be eligible for an update to BlackBerry 10 when the new platform launches later this year. In fact, there is going to be very little in terms of connecting BB7 to BB10, since BB7 apps won’t necessarily work with BB10 devices, nor will BB10 apps necessarily work with BB7 devices. They’re two separate ecosystems and two separate platforms.

While Research in Motion has indicated that it will continue to support BlackBerry OS 7.1 for “a while,” it’s only a matter of time before they completely abandon the old OS (which really isn’t that old) and focus their energies exclusively on BlackBerry 10.

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There’s no official model name or number for this device just yet, but we’re hearing that the first BlackBerry 10 device (formerly BBX) will be touch-only, falling in line with Windows Phone, Android, and iOS. It’s not the first tiime that RIM has released a touch-only smartphone, but it did establish itself in the market with one of the best thumb-friendly hardware keyboards out there.

It sounds like RIM isn’t going to focus solely on doing the touchscreen-only thing moving forward. As not to alienate its (shrinking) user base, a BlackBerry 10 device with a physical QWERTY keyboard is being projected for a Q1 2013 launch. It could be a slider, like the Storm, or it could have a smaller display and conventional keyboard, like the Bold.

Now if only RIM can convince more app developers to start working with the platform…

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Research In Motion (RIM) filed a patent for a technology back in November 2007 and it was granted to them today after 5 long years. The technology allows for the smartphone to automatically adjust earpiece volume based on the “estimated degree of seal of an ear about a speaker port”. That’s really convenient, but is it really safe?

The handset will perform this task by using the touch sensor and at least one proximity sensor.  If you are someone who loves to walk and talk, the technology will let you stay away from the volume button when you move between quiet and noisy environments.

Although the new feature sounds like a cool addition, it doesn’t look like it will be enough to help RIM’s smartphones become popular. And in fact, it might become a burden. We believe that the technology will result in RIM smartphones with increased levels of SAR. Just in case you are new to that, SAR or Specific absorption rate is a measure of the rate at which RF energy is absorbed by the body when using a mobile phone.

But you should know that the FCC has strict rules when it comes to SAR levels of phones. If the new technology is going to result in SAR levels higher than that required by FCC, we have to conclude that the new patent is useless.

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Data was compiled by Bloomberg and IDC for the number of handsets shipped in Canada. In 2011, RIM shipped 2.08 million BlackBerry smartphones; Apple was able to ship 2.85 million iPhones over the same period. Contrast that to 2008 when RIM outperformed Apple by a ratio of five to one. The shift has been steady and clear since then.

It’s not just in its native Canada that Research in Motion is hurting. Even though the BlackBerry still holds its place in the Middle East and Indian markets, that market share is quickly dwindling as consumers increasingly shift to Android smartphones, particularly those from Samsung.

The hope is that the QNX-powered BlackBerry 10 smartphones (you might know them as BBX) will reverse the trend, but I’m not exactly staying optimistic. It’s not like the PlayBook has been a white knight for the Waterloo, Ontario company either.

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The new info comes via a webcast about “Developing native games with the BlackBerry NDK 2.0″, during which RIM announced that they are “planning on releasing OS 2.0 on the 21st”. So it’s finally going to arrive. Hopefully there won’t be any problems associated with the rollout.

The 2.0 upgrade is coming with some much needed features including native e-mail, calendars, and contacts apps. As these features were not available when the tablet launched, users were forced to find solutions such as connecting their BlackBerry handsets to their PlayBooks.

You will also get to play with a few Android apps, but the bad news is that the BlackBerry Messenger app will still be missing. Also expected is an updated version of Bridge (BlackBerry Bridge 2.0) which will allow you to remotely control your PlayBook via your BlackBerry smartphone.

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You know how we heard QNX still doesn’t support BES? I guess one way around that is to create yet another operating system and that’s exactly what the Waterloo crew have decided to do, today announcing the next-generation BBX OS for BlackBerry smartphone and tablet devices.

Mike Lazaridis, who is still recovering from the recent BlackBerry outage, took the stage at RIM’s app developer conference to announce the new development. Basically, BBX is a middle ground between QNX and the company’s usual BB OS stream.  After apologizing for the outage and offering $100 in premium app downloads to those affected, Lazaridis continued.

Research in Motion is encouraging developers to create their games using HTML5, since that’s supported by QNX, as well as older platforms like BlackBerry OS 5 and OS6. This way, they can code once and deploy everywhere. There’s also something called Cascades, which is a native UI framework built into BBX, giving developers access to low-level APIs.

On the Enterprise side, unlike pure QNX, BBX should fully support BES. What’s more, enterprise apps can get their own shelf in App World and they would then be hosted by a company’s BES (and be undeletable by employees). There’s also something called BlackBerry Balance that will provide a “corporate partition” for separating BES (work) stuff from the rest of your life.

There was a brief moment discussing how BBX will support the Android Runtime.  A demo was later shown to developers in the Technical Session, but a simple app with menus was just ported.

Even though it’s yet another OS for RIM to handle, BBX could be the unifying factor to help minimize fragmentation and hopefully improve profits for BB app developers. Until we get some more details (like screenshots and demo videos), we’ll have to reserve judgement.

The post RIM’s New BBX Operating System Marries BlackBerry With QNX appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Research in Motion knows that its company has seen brighter days, but the recent BlackBerry outage has added plenty of fuel to the fire. While they are quickly working to fix the situation, RIM founder Mike Lazaridis has come forward with a public apology for the whole situation, saying sorry by way of online video.

“Since launching BlackBerry in 1999, it’s been my goal to provide reliable, real-time communications around the world. We did not deliver on that goal this week. Not even close,” said Lazaridis. “I apologize for the service outages this week. We’ve let many of you down…. You expect better from us. And I expect better from us.”

They say that they’re working around the clock to get the situation under control. “Normal levels” of service have been largely restored in Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa, but they’re still ironing out the kinks and you’re going to have some late messages trickling through. The good news, if you can call it that, is that Laziridis says compensating angry customers is “something we plan to address very soon. And that is a priority.”

Yes, RIM used to be a precious Pearl in the business community. However, they stopped making Bold moves and the rest of the industry threw Curve ball after curveball. They’ve got another Storm to weather and the future looks like it might get Torched. (Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.) Maybe the lack of BES support in the QNX-powered Colt isn’t such a bad thing?

Lazaridis admitted: “We don’t know why the switch failed and why service never failed over to another alternative switch.”
Someone spoke about compensation for RIM users, Lazaridis said it “was something we are thinking about. We have enjoyed a 99.97 uptime over the past 18 months.”

The video is up on ABC News if you want to check it out.

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The concept here is going to sound familiar. When both BlackBerry devices have the Tag app, you can tap them together and they will be able to “share contact information, documents, ULRs, photos, and other multimedia content.” It can also be used to quickly and easily add one another as contacts on BBM. BlackBerry Tag functions by way of NFC.

Since it needs NFC to work, the first phones to use Tag will be the Bold 9900/9930 and the Curve 9350/9360/9370. It’ll be incorporated into the next BlackBerry OS 7 update and we assume that the upcoming QNX-powered BlackBerry smartphones will do it too, though that hasn’t been confirmed. As convenient as this sounds, I don’t think Tag is going to be such a big deal. First, Bump for iPhone wasn’t hugely popular (though some people did use it). Second, most folks are feeling pretty bear-ish about RIM’s future in the age of Android and iOS.

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