toktumi Says the BlackBerry May be Doomed – Nah

Virtual office phone developer Toktumi’s blog title may be a little dramatic (and probably untrue)…

Is the BlackBerry Doomed?

But, the content of this blog item is quite interesting reinforces what I’ve heard from other developers: Developing for RIM’s fragmented BlackBerry platform can be a nightmare. As Toktumi notes: There are dozens of different models, many with different screen sizes, features, hardware, etc. If your software works on one, it may not work on others — so you have to test every single phone, every time you make a change.

Personally, I think the BlackBerry will continue to do just fine (though it might not grow marketshare at the rate it used to) as long as RIM continues to have a laser-like focus on keeping BlackBerry messaging features in tune with its business and consumer customers. It is all about typing and reading text as quickly and easily as possible.

My long-time favorite mobile platform, Windows Mobile, on the other hand is in real danger of becoming forgotten and disappearing. It is under assualt from all sides from the iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and, to a lesser extent, Palm and Nokia.

You want to talk about fragmentation for developers? I have a bunch of apps that just don’t run as expected on the HTC Touch Pro2 because of HTC’s customizations. These apps run fine on another Windows Mobile 6.1 phone without HTC customizations.

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