BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins claims that rapid advancements in the global smartphone market has left Apple trailing when it comes to innovation. Speaking exclusively to The Australian Financial Review ahead of the US launch of the new range of BlackBerry 10 handsets Mr Heins said last week’s launch of the Samsung S4, along with a wave of recent smartphone releases had reeled in the lead Apple used to hold in the market.
“Apple did a fantastic job in bringing touch devices to market ... They did a fantastic job with the user interface, they are a design icon. There is a reason why they were so successful, and we actually have to admit this and respect that,” Mr Heins said. “History repeats itself again I guess ... the rate of innovation is so high in our industry that if you don’t innovate at that speed you can be replaced pretty quickly. The user interface on the iPhone, with all due respect for what this invention was all about is now five years old.”
He went on to explain that one area where he felt that BlackBerry 10 devices had overtaken the iPhone was in the area of multi-tasking. Apple has its fast app switching which saves the state of an app without closing it. It allows certain apps like audio apps to run in the background. BlackBerry 10 devices do things in a different way and allow up to eight apps to run in the background and when you open a ninth app, one is automatically closed.
To be clear, BlackBerry 10 still has app launcher pages, just like Android still has an app drawer, they just have other areas of the Home screen experience, including BlackBerry Hub, that you can gesture through. It might be more complicated, but it's also more convenient.
There is no doubt that a lot of iPhone users are pinning a lot of hope on the upcoming release of the next iteration of Apple’s iOS firmware. Hardware appears to no longer be the difference in mobile technology; as all top end phones seem to have reached a really high specification. It's software and services that are increasingly important.
It is certainly going to be interesting to see how Apple will wow us with iOS 7 when we finally get to see it; hopefully in the not too distant future. Maybe then, it will put an end to comments about it being old and dated!
Source: The Australian Financial Review
