DevCon

Research In Motion is expanding its series of developers conferences to European programmers.

The first DevCon Europe, as it's called, is set for Amsterdam on February 7 and 8, 2012.

The BlackBerry maker has been slowly increasing its outreach to developers, launching DevCon Asia this year. (The 2012 show will take place in Bangkok.) Meanwhile, the San Francisco area will see its fifth such conclave this fall.

RIM's quickening pace for wooing developers with dedicated shows makes us wonder how much the troubled mobile-device maker hopes that developer interest will increase its mainstream appeal. Android and iOS have … Read more

RIM took a few of us by surprise this week by announcing its first ever tablet, the BlackBerry PlayBook. Donald Bell, our resident tablet expert, joins us to discuss it and what it means to the mobile industry. We also talk about Windows Phone 7, 4G LTE, and a weird Sony Ericsson accessory.

News Everything we know about the BlackBerry PlayBook BlackBerry PlayBook, first impression RIM gives BlackBerry Messenger a new social life RIM shows off BlackBerry Bold, Curve, Pearl running OS 6 AT&T snags BlackBerry Curve 3G, Pearl 3G … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--RIM put the rest of the world on notice that it's not just a boring, yet eminently reliable, buttoned-up smartphone maker anymore.

As was widely rumored, RIM did unveil its first non-smartphone device today at the opening keynote event at its DevCon developer conference here. The company is calling it the PlayBook.

The PlayBook is aimed at people who do more work than play--RIM's calling it "the first professional tablet"--but the company is certainly not ignoring the world outside of the office. In fact, even though RIM is playing very heavily to its reliable, … Read more

San Francisco--RIM gave developers yet another reason to stick with BlackBerry when it announced its own advertising platform at the BlackBerry Developer's Conference on Monday. Similar to iAds, the BlackBerry Advertising Service will allow developers to integrate advertising into their applications. RIM will act as mediator and will work with five different ad networks at launch (JumpTap, Amovee, Lat49, Millenial Media, Mojiva) with more ad networks to follow in the coming months.

The ads can be as simple or as rich as developers want, and they can insert the ads with just three lines of code, according to RIM. … Read more

San Francisco--RIM developers can now build applications based on BlackBerry WebWorks, a new open-source Web-based development platform. These apps can be written entirely in HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript, and developers can then use the BlackBerry Web App Packager to wrap the apps in a Javascript wrapper, making it easier for them to integrate the app with BlackBerry services. The Web apps can be built on the device and delivered through the App World like other native BlackBerry apps.

RIM says that this new platform combines the richness of Java with the speed of Web development. The BlackBerry open Web platform … Read more

Editor's note: We used Cover It Live for this event, so if you missed the live blog, you can still replay it in the embedded component below. Replaying the event will give you all the live updates along with commentary from our readers and CNET editors Donald Bell, Jessica Dolcourt, Nicole Lee, and Josh Lowensohn. For those of you who just want the updates, we've included them in regular text here. To get the key points from today's announcement, you can check out our summary of what got announced, in our story here. We've also embedded a short video clip of the PlayBook's introduction.

SAN FRANCISCO--A developer conference can be kind of a snooze for non-programmer folks, but Research In Motion had some rather interesting news to reveal today. After a smattering of reports of an impending BlackBerry tablet hit this spring and summer, RIM took the opportunity during its keynote address at RIM DevCon to show off the BlackBerry PlayBook, which it calls the first professional tablet.

Transcript of live blog starts here:… Read more

Research In Motion is known for basically one thing: making reliable smartphones that brought e-mailing from a phone to the mainstream. But it might be branching out very soon.

The Canadian company is the largest smartphone purveyor in the U.S., and despite the surging sales of Apple iPhones and Google Android-powered devices, RIM has held its ground--for now. Its BlackBerry accounts for 41 percent of smartphones in the U.S., and is second overall worldwide after Nokia.

But even though RIM has been able to hold on to its lead in smartphones, Apple's iOS software and Android are not staying put there. Both are moving on to bigger, more powerful mobile devices: touch-screen tablets. The iPad's runaway success has created a new device category for consumers who want to buy something that's lighter than a laptop and easier to type and browse on than a smartphone. And almost everyone is jumping in: Dell, HP, and Samsung are looking to get a piece of this market early on, too, which analysts expect to hit 15 million units this year, and more than 20 million next year.

RIM, somewhat surprisingly, is one of those with its eye on this market. Since the spring, reports have leaked out that the company was testing a tablet to work in conjunction with its smartphone. RIM was found to have bought the domain name "Blackpad.com," which has led some to nickname the yet-to-be confirmed device "BlackPad."

Word came last week that the company might even introduce the device today, when President and Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis and other execs take the stage at the annual developer gathering, RIM DevCon, in San Francisco. The device is not expected, however, to ship until closer to the end of the year.

If it does offer a sneak peek, it's a bold move to do it in the same venue Apple uses to announce its new iPhone every year (San Francisco's Moscone Center), but not more so than RIM actually making a tablet in the first place.

If RIM trots out a sister device to the BlackBerry, like a touch-screen tablet, it's a sign that the company isn't resigned to letting Apple and Android steal its market share without a good fight.… Read more

With the lukewarm reception of the BlackBerry Torch and with Android's steady onward march into market share, few pundits expected RIM to exceed its revenue estimates for the quarter.

Now with more BlackBerry Curves sporting OS 6 flowing into the market, RIM's continued courtship of application developers is crucial. To that end, the company released a video in which RIM talks about its developer strategy, and a not-so-secret list of services the company plans to announce at its upcoming BlackBerry Developer Conference in San Francisco later this month.

RIM's expected keynote announcements include unveiling a new social-apps … Read more

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--If you're not exactly sure what you want in a mobile computer, don't worry: the folks who are building them aren't entirely sure themselves.

The consensus among five panelists gathered here at the ARM Developers Conference was that this is a very interesting and confusing time to be thinking about the future of mobile computing, because the playing field is so wide open and because consumers haven't decided exactly what they want.

"It's sort of like Darwin," said Tony Milbourn, director of mobile devices at Motorola. "We don't … Read more