Tonight I attended presentation by Tyler Lessard VP of Developer Relations for RIM.

  1. There are 3 million downloads daily from BlackBerry store even though they have a fraction of the number of apps available on the Android and iPhone stores.
  2. ESPN reports more traffic from mobile use than web use during live events.
  3. Massive app downloads are happening in spite of incredibly limited marketing and lack of recommendation engines.
  4. RIM envisions  “super apps”  —  apps so valuable that a user runs them all the time.
  5. Social app possibilities go beyond sharing content to your social networks; for example creating a Blackberry group for fellow fans of your favorite team.
  6. People will spend more a ringtone than on the full recording of the same song.
  7. “Hyperconnectedness” will see your smartphone connect meaningfully to your car, your home, payment terminals and vending machines.
  8. BlackBerry Messenger is becoming a social platform that other apps can access: for example, letting you invite a BBM friend to play a game with you by accessing yur BBM contacts; the developer doesn’t need to build their own invitation system and can even embed chat within the game.
  9. Apps built for BlackBerry won’t initially run on the PlayBook tablet, which runs a different OS.
  10. The first edition PlayBook won’t have 3G but will pair with your BlackBerry to use its connection.
  11. Tyler showed a pre-launch Playbook tablet and I didn’t leap from my seat to rip it from his hands.  Who knew I had that kind of restraint?