RIM renames BBX platform to BlackBerry 10

Research In Motion (RIM) has changed the name of its forthcoming BBX platform (based on QNX) to BlackBerry 10 after legal challenges in the U.S. The company hopes that BlackBerry 10 will power it back to growth in key markets like the U.S.
 
At BlackBerry Devcon Asia, currently being held in Singapore, RIM showcased its strengths in the Asia-Pacific region, an area where it is doing extremely well and is also the smartphone of choice in many countries, even being the number one mobile phone maker in large markets, like Indonesia.

Could a new OS usher in a new mobile frontier for the Canadian company?

 
RIM executives underlined IDC research that revealed recently that BlackBerry will grow faster than the Asia-Pacific smartphone market, itself. Globally, while there were 115 BlackBerry smartphones that were sold till last year, the current figure stands at 168 million. And with the company's push on its instant messaging platform, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), usage has shot up from 28 million to 50 million users in the past year.
 
BlackBerry 10 will leverage HTML 5 to ensure that apps built will run across the multiple operating systems that RIM will have its portfolio, with the traditional BlackBerry OS and BlackBerry 10 built using different code lines. RIM is pushing developers to use HTML 5 to ensure that the headache of supporting OS 5, OS 6, now OS 7 and BlackBerry 10 next year is a manageable one.
 
This is especially important, since the vast majority of the installed base of BlackBerry devices will be on older OS 5 and OS 6 platforms.

To know more on all that's happening on the BBX front, click here