Research in Motion, and its CEO Thorsten Heins, have been on something of a PR tour lately with members of the media. This was done in part for some damage control after the Blackberry maker announced in late June it would delay the launch of Blackberry 10 to the first quarter of 2013. It also announced it would lay off 5,000 more of its workers.
This weekend, Heins did something that few CEOs of a major company would dare to do; he answered questions from regular folks. In a story on The Globe and Mail newspaper website, Heins answered 10 of the over 200 questions submitted by its readers.
One of them, a 42 year old small business owner named Stephen, asked if Blackberry 10 would be competitive with Apple and Google and their mobile operating systems (iOS and Android, respectively). Heins answered by saying:
While our competitors update their offerings, BlackBerry 10 will be the only mobile platform built from the ground up with the latest technologies in mind – whether it’s mobile video chat or near-field communications that enable you to use your handset like a wallet.
Yet another person asked if Blackberry might adopt another mobile phone OS for its hardware, such as Windows Phone 8. Heins said:
We have considered a range of options that included adopting someone else’s operating system, but ultimately we rejected that idea. We determined that the best way to build value for our stakeholders and do right by our users is to unite devices and software with BlackBerry 10 – building each from the ground up so they work together without a hitch.
Heins also said that he was "absolutely committed" to sticking to the current plan of releasing Blackberry 10 by the first quarter of 2013. In a response to yet another question, asking if RIM will work on making Blackberry 10 reliable and not have small bugs pop up as they do with current Blackberry devices, Heins said:
This is one of my pet peeves, and I’m sorry your device did not meet your expectations. Based on your description, it does not meet mine either. I believe it’s the little things that distinguish excellent products from merely good ones. It is one of the reasons I wanted to give our development teams some extra time on BlackBerry 10.
Source: The Globe and Mail
7 Comments - Add comment