ReadWriteMobile

This is Part Two of a two-part series on Disassembling Android. 

"Android is open for disruption.” That's what Stewart Putney, CEO of the mobile gaming company Moblyng, said last August. He was talking about the potential for HTML5 Web apps to disrupt the Android Market (now Google Play), but he may have been oddly prophetic. Android has not been riding high in 2012. More than one competitor is lining up to strike a decisive blow.

BlackBerry World 2012 is perhaps the most important event in the history of Research In Motion. If attendees, investors, developers and journalists do not walk away from the conference feeling confident that the company can turn it around with its upcoming BlackBerry 10 mobile operating system, then RIM might cease to exist as a top-tier smartphone manufacturer and software producer by the end of the year. 

So what do you do when you are down, everybody is counting you out and the future is full of nothing except uncertainty? Rally the troops, promise great things to come, put your head down and try to make it happen. Plus maybe offer a gave a few glimpses of your next big thing. Is BlackBerry 10 the platform that will save RIM?

Since Research In Motion made BlackBerry synonymous with smartphones in the early aughts, the company has taken a pounding for mis-steps, delays, intentional blindness, equivocations and most tellingly, mediocre products.

Those brickbats have often been well-deserved, but RIM should also have earned some respect, if not love, for the important role it played in smartphone development and popularization - not to mention a string of iconic-at-the-time devices that significantly advanced the state of the art.

If you liken app stores to race horses, Apple is the biggest, baddest thoroughbred in town. Google Play is a fine specimen with some distinct qualities but has a lot of work to do in the practice yard before catching up. Everything else is an also-ran. Windows Phone has been growing rapidly, increasing from 40,000 apps in Nov. 2011 to 70,000 at the most recent count. Then there is BlackBerry App World. For all of Research In Motion's troubles, its app repository is tied with Windows Phone at 70,000, which includes 15,000 specifically designed for the BlackBerry PlayBook. There are no tablet apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace, mostly because there is no Windows tablet (well, one worth anything).

German BlackBerry blog BlogBerry.de sent us over an infographic (through its content promotion specialist BlueGrass Interactive) breaking down the "reality" of the native app stores. It quotes RIM VP of developer relations Alec Saunders as saying 13% of BlackBerry developers have made $100,000 or more off their apps. We have heard this song and dance before. Take a look at the infographic below and let us know in the comments what you think of the BlackBerry App World, its quality of apps and whether or not it is a wise business decision to build any apps for the BlackBerry platform these days.

Better late than never, right? Research In Motion has released the next iteration of its BlackBerry PlayBook OS that (finally) brings some core functions to the tablet that were missing when the slate was released in April 2010. That includes a dedicated email client with a unified inbox, calendar and contact apps, improved document editing and an updated BlackBerry Bridge. It will also run select Android apps.

The question for RIM is whether or not these updates will actually give consumers and enterprises incentive to buy the tablet. Most people's minds were made up on the PlayBook last year and it is doubtful that a software update, no matter how badly it was needed, will entice new users. It has been 10 months since the original release and the reviews at launch were that the PlayBook was half-baked. Fully baked now, will consumers care?

Everybody is armed, forces are deployed and the battleground is chosen. Let's get this thermonuclear war started.

2011 was the year that the major mobile platform providers loaded up with ammunition in the upcoming world war between Apple, Microsoft, Research In Motion and Google. Apple acquired patents from Novell while the "Rock Star" group of RIM, Microsoft and Apple won the majority of Nortel's patents. Google went big and bought everything that Motorola owned. We know all of this already. But, that was just the staging area. The real test will be in 2012. On Monday, the United States Department of Justice approved all of those acquisitions in one fell swoop.

Steve Jobs promised to go "thermonuclear" on Android over patent violations. That seems to be a dying wish that Apple is willing to pursue. Now that the big guns are out, what will be the consequence to the mobile ecosystem? Will the arms race force a détente, powerful patent portfolios canceling each other out? Or is this the beginning of disruptive lawsuits that ultimately becomes harmful to consumers looking for choice?

If there were any uncertainty that Google's acquisition of Motorola would be approved by regulatory agencies across the world, one only has to look at the fourth quarter of 2011 to see why it never was in danger. The last quarter of 2011 showed us which companies really control the smartphone market and Motorola was certainly not one of them. Between Apple and Samsung, the two behemoths controlled 95% of mobile phone profits worldwide, according to Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley.

The pincer formation at the top of the ecosystem means that no regulatory agency can deny Google its $12.5 billion purchase. Life has also become extremely difficult for all the other OEMs and mobile platforms trying to make a dent in the market. If you are not making an iDevice or some type of Galaxy product, Apple and Samsung are squeezing you out of the market. The clock is ticking.

Apple's strategy to take over the lead in the smartphone market from Android is working. In new numbers from research firm Nielsen, 37% of recent (within the last three months) smartphone buyers chose the iPhone, well above the 25.1% that did so in October 2011. Android still holds the market lead but the margin is beginning to shrink.

Android rose to the top of the smartphone heap by sheer volume. It has a plethora of original equipment manufacturers pumping out new devices every week that are distributed across the four major U.S. mobile carriers along varying price points. Why has Apple caught up? Well, because it now does that too.

A temporary restraining order issued by a federal court in Albuquerque on behalf of a software company that produces a version of BASIC, has compelled Research In Motion to start calling the next version of its operating system for BlackBerry smartphones "BlackBerry 10." This according to a tweet from the company's official Twitter feed.

The name BBx (albeit with a small "x") is being used by Basis Software of Albuquerque as a trademark for its Business BASIC language interpreter, which is a classic language interpreter capable of extending business logic established over the previous decades to a platform that reaches smartphones, including BlackBerrys. Perhaps the most startling element of this case came from RIM, whose U.S.-based subsidiary had claimed in court, according to the judge's ruling, that the Singapore developers' conference to which the restraining order applies is not all that important to anyone in America.

The barrier for entry for creating software for computing devices has never been lower. This has a lot to do with the mobile revolution. According to a report from VisionMobile, the time to market for applications has decreased from 82 days through traditional channels to 36 days with the advent of the app store. Developers have more reasons to publish to apps stores now than ever before, with curation, distribution, billing and monetization, discovery and feedback opportunities from users higher than ever.

There are several kinds of mobile developers. There are independent software vendors, contractors, hobbyists, moonlighting engineers, entrepreneurs, in-house and B2B/B2C focused developers. The strength a given mobile platform has much to do with how many quality developers it can attract to it.