BlackBerry 10 Instagram-like Picture Editor Photos, Video
We were waiting to publish these, but since the cat is already out of the bag with how the native Picture Editor app for BlackBerry 10 will be like, we thought we'd share. RIM will be introducing a new picture editing app based …
Context & Ripple Effects
RIM is showing off a native Picture Editor for BlackBerry 10 months before the platform ships, baking Instagram-style photo and video filtering directly into the OS rather than waiting for third-party apps. The pickup across Engadget, The Verge, MobileSyrup, Pocket-lint, SlashGear, CrackBerry, Phone Arena and Softpedia shows how much attention rides on whether BB10 launches looking modern.
The move lands in a market Instagram has already reshaped: its Android updates through mid-2012 added Flickr sharing and Nexus 7 support while U.S. web traffic jumped 78 percent in April, early rival PicPlz's shutdown was being framed as 'the Instagram Effect,' and Facebook had responded with its own photo-filter push back in August 2011. A new platform arriving without comparable editing tools would have been DOA with the same users.
First-order effects
- BB10 devices will ship with filtering and video editing built in, so RIM no longer depends on Instagram or any third party porting their apps to make the camera experience competitive at launch.
- Instagram faces a platform vendor treating its core feature set as table stakes — on BlackBerry, the differentiator disappears into the OS itself.
Second-order effects
- Standalone editor developers lose the pre-installed slot on yet another platform, pushing them toward differentiation on social graph and sharing networks rather than tools.
- Facebook's filter strategy and Instagram's rapid Android expansion set the pace RIM is chasing; each native copy lowers the switching cost of leaving Instagram's app behind.
Third-order effects
- If every OS vendor absorbs once-app-only features at launch, the durable value in mobile photo software shifts from editing capability to the network around it — the same consolidation that displaced PicPlz playing out at the operating-system layer.
The trend: Mobile platforms are absorbing viral app features natively before launch, forcing standalone photo apps to compete on community rather than capability.