The Competition: BlackBerry to Get OpenGL, Flash, Services Platform
Over at Sister-Site CrackBerry.com, Kevin is rocking the LiveBlog of the announcements from today's developer conference right now. Why should you care? Well, it looks like RIM is hoping to close the gap on a few of the things they're missing that webOS has (or will have) and are pushing ahead on other fronts. To wit:
- RIM Announces upcoming OpenGL support for the BlackBerry Platform. This is the big one and it will go a long way towards making the BB OS feel a little less stale when compared to other, more modern mobile operating systems. We've obviously been hoping for the same for webOS (perhaps in the form of WebGL).
- In conjunction with the above, RIM is also allowing themes into their App Store.
- RIM and Adobe, Sitting in a Tree. Palm won't have exclusivity on Flash and Flash Apps, as RIM is beefing up their participation in the Open Screen Project.
- RIM Unveils New Services Platform for Developers. RIM made their name on push email, now they're offering push, advertising, location services, and more to developers. It looks to be more robust than then announced-but-not-delivered Mojo Messaging Service for webOS, which offers push and location awareness.
We know that Palm is driving as quickly as a small company can to offer more services and support to developers - they did just announce in-browser development with Ares - but now that RIM seems to finally 'get' that they need to put some more glitz into the OS, Palm's going to have to work double-time to stay in the game.
Palm and webOS fans: Nervous? Shrugging? What do you think?
