A spokeswoman of Blackberry announced on the Associated Press that their Blackberry 10 phone will have a touch screen only and that it will be launched by the fourth quarter of this year. News on a physical keyboard model has been declined by the company however as to when it could be available.
This has not been that much of a surprising news to everyone since the Dev Alpha device wherein RIM has been demonstrating Blackberry 10 is also using touch screen technology instead of keys. As a user goes on to type, there will be suggested words that will come out above the next letters in a sequence where the user can select up towards the letter in order to complete the word automatically.
Even though this has been one of the features that people are waiting for in Blackberry, there are some industry analysts that are in doubt about this move by the company. An analyst that works at BGC Financial told the Associated Press that the Blackberry’s physical keyboard has been its most dominant feature that has been separating the product from its competitors. The analyst also mentioned that if the company does not play along with their strengths that have been proven historically, they may find it difficult to get a foothold with this new product.
This analyst goes on to question about the foothold that RIM has in the market as of now since most of the industry is now migrating away from the physical keyboards of the past while majority of the customers are going along with this. There are only a few high-end Android phones left in the market that have physical keyboards. HTC said that they will no longer go back to their original form while the iPhone line of Apple is just doing fine without requiring the bulky hardware keys.
The company has felt that it owes its loyal users the physical keyboards that they have loved for a long time. Even the CEO of RIM stated that this could just be wrong if they start to lose focus on physical keyboards now. It is better for the company to just stick to one piece of hardware feature and one that shows just where their path is headed in the industry. Things can turn even worse if the company continues with the launch of the Blackberry 10 with a lousy keyboard model in the hopes of appeasing its customer’s requests for a physical keyboard.
Author Bio:
Angelina, mostly a writer on technology and mobile broadband, is also capable of writing other interesting topics. She works as a guest blogger at Broadband Expert and is willing to share her insights on people who are interested in these topics.
