Ebscer News

Much has already been written about what was said at BlackBerry World and BlackBerry 10 Jam. (The most interesting probably being this article done by Forbes). But I think that it is even more interesting to look at what didn’t happen during this week.

Android was nowhere to be seen

Most attendees at BlackBerry World were using a BlackBerry Bold (about 80% of the crowd). Another 10% were using a BlackBerry Torch, and the remaining 10% were using iPhones. I really don’t think that I saw a single Android device during the entire event. What is more is that despite the announcement that BB10 would allow Android apps to run in their own windows, nobody seemed all that interested in writing Android apps, with the attention being placed on Cascades and HTML5/bbui.js instead.

Nobody was complaining about the lack of support for BBOS java apps

At BlackBerry DevCon this last fall you could not go anywhere without running into someone complaining about the lack of support for BlackBerry Java apps on the platform. While it wasn’t the slightest bit of a surprise to those of us paying attention, it was a very annoying to have to hear about it again and again. Fortunately, those people have finally gotten over themselves. Perhaps is was due to seeing how non-native the Android apps looked and acted, or by seeing how easy Cascades was to work with, but I didn’t run into anyone still bemoaning the point.

Dan Dodge wasn’t there

Despite his recent promotion, nobody seems to have seen Dan Dodge at the event. He has always preferred to be a behind the scenes type of guy, but in retrospect it was a bit weird that he wasn’t in Orlando. So John Pinkerton tells me that Dan Dodge was at the event. Still interesting that he was at BlackBerry World, rather then on the tech side of things.

There was a lack of media at BB10Jam

It was surprising to see how much most of the media just shrugged its shoulders in regards to BB10Jam and made little to no attempt to cover it. In the article mentioned at the top of the post, Brian Caulfield wrote about how he “sneaked” in. But even from the blogs there was very little coverage. The bloggers that are typically at these types of events were only seen at the joint party at Universal Studios.

In conclusion

Are any of these points really that significant? Probably not. Still, this is my way of reporting on what happened this past week in Orlando without pointlessly rehashing what everyone else has already written.

A few days ago YouMail announced their final update to their BlackBerry app. This has generated a lot of (misinformed) attention about the future of YouMail, and BlackBerry.

The main problem is that YouMail forgot to consider how their blog post would be read. At BlackBerry 10 Jam, I am going to be giving a talk on how to support your app after launch, and one of the main points is that everything is marketing. This includes blog posts announcing a new release of your product. With a different choice of words in the post, the stories would be about how YouMail is improving their BlackBerry app.

As a business decision, ending future development for the BlackBerry OS is probably the right move for them. They already have a BlackBerry app that has had 2+ years of development behind it. We know that RIM is not going to release any new API’s or formfactors to their current line of phones. So there isn’t too much of a reason why YouMail’s current app couldn’t be good enough to last for the rest of the lifecycle of the current BlackBerry OS. Especially when they have just released a significant update for it.

But it is still a terrible idea to post a statement that you are no longer working on the app.

You need to think before you speak, and put the proper message out there. A month ago I announced that I was no longer going to be supporting BlackBerry devices running OS 4.x in what was actually a rather similar decision. Sure, I was cutting off support for potentially millions of BlackBerry users, because I had determined it wasn’t worth the time. But because I considered the audience that would be reading it, the post got a very different reaction.

In part it was because I wasn’t cutting off support for current devices, but also because I didn’t try to coddle it in half-hearted feel good, whishy washy language. I actually have yet to hear from anyone bothered by my decision.

YouMail’s CEO Alex Quilici however, went out of his way to made things worse, by complaining about BlackBerry to CNN instead of talking up the new features they had just added. Ending with plea for some help from RIM is unlikely go answered, give the unnecessary bad press that YouMail is giving the company. Instead, Alec Saunders is quite understandably pissed off, and called for Quilici to fold his company. (Have I mentioned that this is why I love Saunders?)

It may make sense for YouMail to focus on iOS and Android over BlackBerry (in the short term), but that doesn’t make it a good idea to turn friends in enemies. Yes, you need to be bold, and speak your mind, but you also need to consider the fall out from of what you say. Everything you do has an impact on your brand, and sometimes a stupid blog post has more impact then your app.