Posts Tagged ‘mikelazaridis’

BlackBerry 6 coming in third quarter of this year

RIM's co-CEO Mike Lazaridis just announced in an analyst call today that the company's next platform -- coined BlackBerry 6 -- will be available "in the next calendar quarter," which we take to mean the third quarter of 2010. We weren't able to see a video preview of the platform that was shown to analysts attending the event, but the demo apparently showed a touchscreen interface; a follow-up question from the audience confirmed that it'll be available for both touch and non-touch devices, though. Interestingly, Lazaridis said that the company's all-new WebKit -based browser is part and parcel with 6, pointing out that the rendering engine will have implications throughout the platform and the apps that run on it, not just on the browser alone; in other words, we wouldn't expect a release of a WebKit browser from these guys for OS 5.0-based devices

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RIM’s Mike Lazaridis issues report from Bizarro World, says touchscreen devices like the iPhone ‘aren’t that popular,’ forgets he made the Storm

Both of RIM's co-CEOs have reputations for being pretty opinionated dudes, and we feel like Mike Lazaridis in particular would go to the ends of the Earth to support BlackBerry's business model -- but at the cost of one of his own products? Speaking at a tech conference in Toronto today, Lazaridis apparently said that the long-term viability of the tablet market ( iPad included) is in doubt, especially as smartphones get more powerful; that would probably serve to quash the rumors from a few days back that the company is working on its own large-display device for release later this year. More interestingly, though, were his comments that full touchscreen phones like the iPhone "aren't that popular" -- that's news to us -- and that many that end up buying them ultimately go back to a physical keyboard handset.

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