BlackBerry tells developers: 'we are fighting' - Telegraph.co.uk

More than 80 million people around the world rely on BlackBerry smartphones for email, messages and calls. That's more than the population of Iran and nearly the size of Germany. Yet at the company’s latest conference in San Jose, California, the trouble the company is in could scarcely have been more palpable. The once mighty Research in Motion, makers of the BlackBerry, struggled to fill a third of a 1,500 seat venue. Just last year, it was standing room only in a 2,000 seat hall.

Later today RIM will announce financial results that analysts widely expect to simply be another milestone on the company’s long and sharpening decline. With 90 per cent of its stock market value already gone, many analysts expect the results to be the last time that the company will post a rise in its subscribers for years to come. And even the most recent rises have seen growth in low-profit, developing markets offsetting falls in profitable Western Europe and America.

As Thorsten Heins, the chief executive, showcased his latest products, however, many developers and journalists present were impressed with what he was saying. Stock rose by more than 5 per cent. The mobile handset he showed, named Dev Alpha B, is produced specifically for software developers to test their new programmes and the hope is that by the time a whole new range of devices launches next year, many more apps will be available.

Indeed, Heins’ argument is that he is leading RIM to build not just a few new phones but a whole new platform for mobile computing based on phones and tablets. That means a wholesale transition in an already troubled business, but it also means setting the firm up for the future. “We are convinced this platform will shape the next 10 years as profoundly and as positively as BlackBerry shaped the last decade," Heins said. His talk for now is of having “a shot at being number three”, behind Apple and Google. To get there, tens of thousands of staff have already been made redundant, as RIM becomes nimbler and more agile.

Nonetheless, a recent survey by Appcelerator found that in the last 18 months, interest from developers fell markedly. Where previously 40 per cent said they were ‘very interested’ in making apps for BlackBerry, today that number is just 9 per cent. For every positive in the BlackBerry story, there seem to be rather more negatives.

Around the halls at Jam, however, developers expressed more mixed feelings â€" they conceded that RIM was in trouble but argued that it wasn’t dead yet and that making money on the platform was already possible. And under a new initiative, apps will have their first $10,000 of revenue guaranteed by RIM. Don Lindsay, Vice President of User Experience, says that he wants BlackBerry devices to provide users with “moments of charm”, where users are delighted by what they find in the new platform. That’s found, for instance, in clever features that let users capture photographs and then rewind people’s facial expressions to choose the perfect moment. Even setting the alarm clock is supposed to be fun because of the neat design. “It’s these moments where the platform really starts to resonate with the public,” says Lindsay.

He may well be right â€" Heins left the stage in San Jose saying “we are fighting”, and showed a spoof video where senior staff covered “Keep on Loving You” by REO Speedwagon, aiming to entice software developers to the platform and grow the 105,000 apps to something closer to Apple’s 600,000. Morale may be low but RIM still has the confidence not to take itself too seriously, bolstered by the knowledge that those 80million subscribers are not going anywhere in the next few weeks. It may be hard to see them ever recapturing their former glories, but it would be foolish to write the company off quite yet.