At the BlackBerry DevCon keynote, RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis formally announced BlackBerry BBX, RIM’s new unified operating system for both smartphones and tablets.
“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.”
The BBX platform will include the BBX-OS and will support BlackBerry cloud services and development environments for both HTML5 and native developers. It will also support applications developed for the BlackBerry PlayBook as well as the BlackBerry Runtime for Android Apps on future BBX-based tablets and smartphones. It also includes the BlackBerry Cascades UI Framework for advanced graphics and “deep” integration between apps, always-on push services, BBM.
RIM also announced a developer beta of BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 but fell short of delivering a release date. An upgrade enabling users to get email, contacts and calendar apps without having to pair their PlayBook to their BlackBerry smartphone is long overdue and a cause of some discontent among the tablet’s users.
Sadly, RIM did not show off any new hardware at the keynote. Specific details regarding BBX products and availability will only be provided at a later (and unspecified) date.