Overall users hit 80 million, up from 78 million earlier this year, resulting in a 3 per cent jump in RIM shares, though that's also thanks to the unveiling of BlackBerry 10. The new OS will be launched next year as the final roll of the dice for the company for whom dominance in enterprise mobility was a given for so long.
BlackBerry 10 is pretty, making extensive use of the "slide on" paradigm which worked so well on the PlayBook. Running apps reduce to tiles capable of displaying their status, and everything can be shuffled aside to peek at the universal inbox (the Hub) without switching applications, offering enough eye candy to stand comparison with the competition.
But a swish interface won't sell devices, it will just make it easier for BlackBerry users in the pub to defend the decision they've made, or the one which was forced on them by their employer.
Which brings us to Balance: probably the most important innovation in BlackBerry 10, and the feature which will make or break RIM's chances next year. Balance separates the user's work and private profiles, allowing them to switch between the two with a tap but combining data from both when it's important to do so.
That means the calendar shows both private and work appointments, immediately solving a problem which plagues all of us as our phone diaries find themselves synchronised with the work cloud. Applications can be installed into either profile, or both, and corporate control can limit private use of work resources (such as restricting the office Wi-Fi to "work" applications).
Source: The Register
