Even though RIM is launching its BlackBerry 10 operating system on January 10, it is not giving up developing its older BlackBerry 7 platform. According to CEO Thorsten Heins, RIM continues to have a significant R&D team working on the platform that continues to work on it. Unlike Nokia, which stopped working on its Symbian and MeeGo platforms altogether to focus on Windows Phone, RIM believes BlackBerry 7 still has an important role to play for the company, especially in the low-cost segment in Asia Pacific markets.
“There is a strong success with BB7 devices in the Asia Pac markets. And as you can see on the devices that we’re launching with BB10, you can probably get an idea of in which price points they fit. So no, we will support those on-boarding, entry-level smartphone markets. We will continue to support them with BlackBerry 7, and you might expect us to even build one of the other new products based on BlackBerry 7,” Heins said during the company’s third quarter earnings call.
Heins even mentioned that RIM had all the tools and teams necessary to license BlackBerry 10 to another company, if someone approaches them and they are open to licensing the platform. However, they first need to prove the capabilities of BlackBerry 10, which the company will do on January 30.
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