Update from event:

The points below are NOT quotes. They are paraphrased and/or my own personal liberal interpretations. I cannot emphasize this point enough; nobody from RIM actually said these words.

1. We are the carrier’s friend. Bandwidth is extremely constrained, and upgrading networks costs tens or hundreds of billions of dollars. All-you-can-eat data plans are unrealistic and unfair. Users and applications need to be policed. Applications need to be made more efficient, consuming less bandwidth, enabling batteries to last longer.

2. We are the enterprise’s friend. Employees need to be monitored, policed and restricted. Employees need to be prevented from distractions that reduce their concentration on work. Users need to be restricted from activities that could compromise the security of the network and the information they possess.

3. We are the consumer’s friend. We don’t have an “App Store gateway” where we approve apps. You can load any app you want, subject to the carrier’s approval – after all, you ride on their property (spectrum/bandwidth), and it is a voluntary contract. We also allow massive multitasking, and our architecture minimizes the drain on the battery and reduces bandwidth consumption, increasing efficiency.

4. We are the app developer’s friend. We have more tools available than any other platform. Our servers allow for squeezing the bandwidth consumption, and for allowing push services. We support Adobe flash and are readying our webkit browser. Only a very small portion of Blackberry apps are in AppWorld – most are delivered directly from the publisher – examples being google, wall street journal and so forth.

I think my interpretation of Blackberry’s vision differs from the polyannish view of some other platform communities who seem to say something like:

1. F*#k the carrier!
2. Bandwidth is, or should be, free!
3. Security – what is that?

This reminds me of a cartoon from about a year ago:

Presidential candidate to the audience:
“Free health care!”
Audience:
“Yeah!”
Presidential candidate:
“Free education!”
Audience:
“Yeah!”
Presidential candidate:
“Free housing!”
Audience:
“Yeah!”
Presidential candidate:
“Free food!”
Audience:
“Yeah!”
Presidential candidate:
“Jobs for everyone!”
Audience:
“Yeah!”
One member of the audience:
“Wait! Why would I want to work?”

SiliconANGLE has a person Live blogging at the 2009 Blackberry developer conference. Only minutes into the first of at least 4 keynotes this morning. They are accompanied by 4 press releases just issued minutes ago. You want to read all of them.

The theme for all of these things is how to make sure that more intense levels of multitasking from over 20 or 30 applications running in the background, will not kill the battery life. The new 9700 model available from TMobile today, and AT&T next week, lasts almost 48 hours under normal usage, and they want to keep it that way.

The top 500 or so of RIM’s technical people are here to discuss and answer questions related to security, multitasking, battery life, and VoIP.

One more thing: New OpenGL ES gaming platform for context-aware, networked gaming.

– peer to peer communications
– push notifications
– location-based alerts
– in-app advertising and payments
– webkit browser
– gears with SQL for offline apps
– widgets with java

More to come from the event

RIM Unveils New Services Platform for BlackBerry Developers
RIM and Adobe to Simplify Delivery of Rich Content and Applications for BlackBerry Smartphones
RIM Announces BlackBerry Application Platform Enhancements to Foster Rich Content Development
RIM Announces BlackBerry Academic Program