Big surprise: RIM's PlayBook tablet QNX OS will replace BlackBerry OS in phones

September 28, 2010 9:22 PM
Devindra Hardawar
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Surprising no one, a Research in Motion vice president confirmed this morning that the fancy new QNX operating system in its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet will eventually replace the traditional BlackBerry OS in its smartphones, Intomobile reports.

Speaking to attendees of RIM’s Developer Conference over a breakfast event, the VP said that the transition to the new operating system will take time. He said that BlackBerry OS 7 — which doesn’t have a release date and is likely a year or two off — will be a step towards a full switch. RIM just unveiled its BlackBerry 6 OS in August with the release of the BlackBerry Torch 9800.

Given the many benefits of the QNX OS over RIM’s BlackBerry OS — including increased stability and efficiency, as well as strong multimedia capabilities — it was widely expected that RIM would eventually make that its sole operating system. Still, the confirmation from a company official is heartening. RIM acquired QNX Software Systems, the company behind the PlayBook’s OS, earlier this year.

RIM has said that some existing BlackBerry applications will run on the PlayBook, but it’s not clear if they will run via software emulation or not (the tablet’s impressive hardware could certainly support emulation). RIM should be doing everything in its power to replace its aging BlackBerry OS with QNX software, but realistically the company can’t abandon its previous OS entirely without considering users who depend on BlackBerry apps.

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  • http://twitter.com/danbey44 Daniel Abbey

    its the blackberry 9800 not 8900.

  • http://www.devindra.org Devindra Hardawar

    Thanks, fixing–

  • Crowd_Sorcerer

    RIM is taking the right course, by taking the time to offer backwards compatibility with existing apps.When we look through history at the OSes that made a clean break without offering backwards compatibility, there is mostly failure, as it alienates and angers the existing loyal followers.Apple has been the master of porting its user base to different OSes and different processors (eg OS9 to OS X; Motorola 68000 to PowerPC to x86). Critically, Apple always maintained backwards compatibility all the way.Microsoft offers some of the worst examples of how to do it. Microsoft Kin phones offered no compatibility to previous operating systems, and died a very quick death. Windows Phone 7 offers no compatibility to Windows Mobile, and will suffer the same fate, as it will cause business users to abandon it.So I wish BlackBerry well with its new slate device. As Jack Gold said in these pages, the PlayBook should be judged as a business device, rather than a toy for the 19-year-olds that other OSes are busy chasing.

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