Java Development

[br14]

Just as an aside on this topic. Now that Google has all but won the copyright and patent case brought by Oracle, I would have thought there's a very good chance RIM might provide a Dalvik implementation on Playbook/BB10.

With no license fees to pay to Oracle having a Java VM on BlackBerry may become an attractive option. Especially if the original BlackBerry API's can be adapted some how. Maybe we'll finally get that BB player promised a couple of years ago.

[sblantipodi]

The android "easyness" will destroy our market.

I love android, it's easy, fast, solid, scalable and powerful but it's too easy and it will destroy the small/medium developers.

Actually really few people earn something from the android market, android is the less remunerative market to date,

also gameloft tough to abandon it some time ago.

[simon_hain]

bb10 delayed to q1/2013, double the estimated losses, another 5000 to be laid off, more than 500 million dollars loss in the last quarter:
things are looking grim!

i attended bb10jam onTour in Berlin yesterday, and there was very few new stuff to be shown, for example a alarm clock app, and, hold your applause, a calculator...
The html5 speaker mentioned that their api progress is hampered by delays in the native implementation, but from a spoken-of release date of 10.10. to Q1/13 is quite an impressive delay for a company that said their primary focus is to be on time.

currently they are reported to have 2.2b in cash, with 500m loss per quarter, well...

[sblantipodi]

Simon you are confirming what I'm saying since one year at least,

RIM is sinking and it has no bailout.

[dx22]

Yep RIM have not been looking good for the past year.
For me it is not sensible to invest time in a sinking ship. I've been doing Android development during the past few months and only support some older bb projects.
If RIM survives this I might return to bb development on their new platform but this won't happen in the next year. I have a feeling that after the new bbos fails(if it ever gets released at all) the new bb phones will be running windows phone.

Sad times - I really wish thigs were different...

[sblantipodi]

I agree and I'm sad for this, RIM was the platform where we done more money, I always felt at home with RIM using BB Java, dynamic licensing and RIM support.

Loosing RIM is like loosing a good colleague.

With the android player, I doubt that they will switch to Windows Phone...

[dx22]

@sblantipodi - I am pretty sure nobody considers that android player to be a serious source of quality apps. From what I know the apps running on the android emulator do not offer the required experience. I think RIM added them only to pump their numbers for number of apps available. I don't see why would anyone buy a Blackberry instead of Android device if this player would be a main source of apps.
RIM's power was in the mail services, bbm, bes - I don't even know if these would be supported on the new os. If you don't offer anything unique you cannot succeed. I love the hardware keyboard in bb devices, the battery life but RIM seem to be dumping all that and make a copy of htc devices.
Again they won't offer anything new so I believe that this new bbos will fail with the whole qnx thing, android player etc. and they will be forced to adopt windows phone. But then again I am only speculating - RIM are always quiet till the very last moment so who knows...

For me I know I am redirecting my efforts in Android and I would also have to consider spending a little fortune for those apple shiny gadgets and do apps there too. Widnows phone is still too young..

[simon_hain]

i don't agree there, the new bb os looks quite good, and bbm is also there.
the main problem i see is that RIM will not survive until they bring it out to the market, and one of the reasons for that is described in the original post (i think), as they just abandon their current platform and don't provide customers with a path forward.

why buy a BB phone if all the apps you buy will not be supported on the next platform?

[QuiteSimple]

It's pretty much Game over.

Q1 of 2013? I bet end of March, even April (remember the PlayBook release date?). Nine months from now, and months after the competition has released their phones (iPhone, Windows, Android etc.)

The whole BB10 world tour has become a joke - what's the point to motivate the devs to do anything for BB10, when it will come in an year?

And by then most users will have already another 2-years contract with new shiny non-BB phone.

Well, BB-development was fun, time to move to somewhere else.

[sandeepkumar03]

Big thread!

Some where in between the thread I read that dumping pure Java in BB10 is due to Oracle Java licensing issue. Oracle sued Google for Java usage in Android OS. But it seems As per this Wikipedia Link, "trial judge ruled that the structure of the Java APIs used by Google was not copyrightable."

Now I am not aware about QNX OS Architecture and if that can support Java or not. As per current situation QNX supports Android runtime for Java. Would it not be possible for RIM to enable Java support by a runtime or something like that to keep Java developer community Happy.

As Android runtime is just supported in Blackberry Playbook and BB10. Though there are lot of Android devices but if one would want to cater to devices for BB OS < 10 then one can't go for Android runtime on Blackberry. And if one want to cater to Playbook and BB OS 10 using Android runtime, they would lose catering to devices (BB OS < 10). It appears to be a catch 22 situation here.

Regards,

Sandeep