RIM’s BlackBerry 10 is a patchwork OS: WSJ

Research In Motion’s upcoming smartphone on BlackBerry 10 could be a race to the finish line for the BlackBerry manufacturer. The new platform is a patchwork of individual elements that RIM has secured either by direct acquisition or licensing deals and it will be difficult for the company to integrate everything together. Right from the OS itself to the UI to some of the unique features RIM had shown off at its developer engagement event last month, are all recent additions, WSJ reports.
The new predictive text keyboard that RIM showcased is not created within the company but is licensed from SwiftKey that already has its keyboard apps in Google Play for Android smartphones and also licenses it to others, many of them RIM rivals. Similarly, the camera functionality in BlackBerry 10 that takes photos without any lag and enables the user to select from photos clicked just before or after the shutter was triggered has been licensed from Scalado. It is thought that Scalado is also behind the camera UI of the Samsung Galaxy S III apart from some other smartphones.
Even the UI of BlackBerry 10 is developed by a company called The Astonishing Tribe, which RIM had acquired in 2010. The platform itself is based on a QNX solution, another company it had acquired that same year. While it is not a new practice for hardware companies to either acquire or license technology from others, RIM probably has done a bit too much of it for its upcoming platform on which it has bet its future.
Not only licensing the main features of a company’s next generation platform a big bet – competition could probably license similar tech and negate the uniqueness – but also becomes difficult and time consuming. RIM has already delayed the launch of BlackBerry 10 once and cannot push forward the release beyond the last quarter of this year.