RIM's roadmap for 2012/Q1 2013: Two BlackBerry 10 phones, two Curves, HSPA+ PlayBook
We've been gathering info on what exactly Research In Motion is planning to release over the next year and even into early 2013, and we now have a solid picture to share with you.
Context & Ripple Effects
This leak lands mid-transition. RIM has been trailing new form factors for years — Unstrung reported its touchscreen BlackBerry plans as far back as November 2007 — but this roadmap is the first concrete picture of how the BlackBerry 10 generation is meant to slot alongside the long-running Curve line and the PlayBook tablet through early 2013.
Every item in it — the two BlackBerry 10 phones, the two Curves, the HSPA+ PlayBook — is sourced reporting rather than confirmed by RIM, and no other outlet had picked the story up as of January 24, 2012. That makes it a test of BGR's sourcing and of whether RIM's actual launch cadence matches what its supply chain and partners are telling journalists.
First-order effects
- Carriers building 2012 lineups get a low-cost Curve refresh to hold the lower tiers of the shelf while the higher-margin BlackBerry 10 hardware waits, per the leaked schedule.
- An HSPA+ PlayBook would close the tablet's cellular gap, giving RIM an enterprise-playable SKU that no longer depends on Wi-Fi availability.
Second-order effects
- Shipping legacy Curves and next-generation BlackBerry 10 devices on the same calendar forces RIM's developer base to support two OS generations at once, splitting scarce third-party engineering across platforms during the exact window when the platform can least afford fragmented attention.
- A roadmap surfacing through leaks rather than an official announcement signals that RIM needs carriers and developers to see a credible pipeline before it is ready to commit dates publicly.
Third-order effects
- A vendor whose recovery rests on a single annual hardware refresh is structurally exposed to slippage: each quarter of delay compounds carrier defection and developer attrition, the familiar spiral of a shrinking single-vendor mobile ecosystem.
The trend: Leaked roadmaps are becoming the instrument struggling platform vendors use to hold carriers and developers in place between operating-system generations.