Chief executive officer of Research In Motion, Mike Lazaridis, has confirmed that the company plans to launch BlackBerry phones that use its new QNX operating system and run on multi core processors.
Lazaridis says that Research In Motion is thinking long term though. He believes that due to battery life and cost issues, it will be best for RIM to wait for appropriate hardware before it launches BlackBerrys with multi core processors.
In an interview with PC Mag, RIM’s chief said the new smartphones will have a simpler version of PlayBook’s user interface. The QNX smartphones will probably run existing Java apps, so people will find it smooth to shift from their existing BlackBerrys.
Right now though, RIM seems to be focusing on its PlayBook. With iPad clearly leading the tablet market, and RIM’s PlayBook being hailed as a possible competitor, the company has a lot to accomplish. PlayBook’s Browser is built on open standards. It supports Flash and performs several tasks simultaneously.
Developers who want to write code for PlayBook may have to do it in three probable ways – either through an existing Java app, or on OpenGL, or using Adobe Air.
QNX was founded in 1982 as Quantum Software Systems, and was acquired by RIM specifically for its tablet business.