Although it may be too late given the rise of successful third-party messaging apps, BBM is also going cross-platform. Surely, the company is gaining momentum, however, it still seems that for now, it’s competing for third place against Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform.

Here are some of the highlights coming out of BlackBerry World taking place in Orlando:

• The BlackBerry Q5. This handset with full keyboard and 3.1-inch touchscreen is targeted at select markets in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia (including the Asia Pacific region) and Latin America when it launches in July. It’s really a budget device for emerging markets, but the company can’t ignore this important segment. The current Z10 and Q10 are a bit too high-end (read: high-priced) for these growth areas, and I think the Q5 is a smart play.
• BlackBerry 10.1 software for the Z10. We had hints of this update coming and it adds some nice features to current Z10 handsets: PIN to PIN messaging, an HDR camera mode, improved cursor control and support for custom notifications. Should these have been in the Z10 on launch day? Probably, but BlackBerry was under the gun to deliver and this is a solid follow up.
• BlackBerry Messenger for iOS and Android. This long-rumored expansion of BBM is now reality, or will be later this summer when it rolls out. At first, the software will support the basics: Messaging and Groups. Later, however, a full suite of BBM tools — already available on BlackBerry 10 — will arrive with screen-sharing and voice calls. Is it too little too late though: If you’re using iOS or Android now, how many friends or contacts do you know that use BBM? BlackBerry says that BBM has more than 60 million monthly active users now but that’s well below some popular third-party messaging services.

BlackBerry is also making inroads with apps, claiming 120,000 are now available for the platform. Bear in mind that a good portion of those are Android apps and not native to BlackBerry; for some that won’t matter. If customers can get the mobile apps they want on the platform, they’ll be happy and so too will BlackBerry.

The company is really in the second inning of its BlackBerry 10 ballgame and picking up steam. I don’t expect BlackBerry sales to rival those of iOS or Android any time soon, but they could present a bigger challenge to Microsoft’s Windows Phone than some have thought. I didn’t see much light at the end of BlackBerry’s tunnel last year; however, the company continues to drive forward with everything it needs to compete.

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He told Bloomberg:

“In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore,” Heins said in an interview yesterday at the Milken Institute conference in Los Angeles. “Maybe a big screen in your workspace, but not a tablet as such. Tablets themselves are not a good business model.”

BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins

Heins’ comments have been mocked mostly for his eye-popping five-year prediction and because of the fresh memories of BlackBerry’s utter flop in the tablet market: the Playbook. But, really, it’s not totally impossible that something much more compelling than tablets may emerge before 2018 that will make iPads or Galaxy tablets unnecessary — that’s just the nature of tech. After all, BlackBerry executives know all too well how quickly an established market can change after watching the iPhone and Android decimate its smartphone  business over the last several years.

But, as a factual, across-the-board statement, the notion that “tablets aren’t a good business model” is problematic. There’s at least one company that might argue with him since it’s been doing pretty well in part thanks to its decision to start making tablets in January 2010. Samsung, for its part, seems pretty happy with its decision to get into that business too. Gartner expects the worldwide tablet business to grow from 197 million units this year to 467 million units by 2017.

You know who’s not having a great time in the tablet market? Companies that were late to the game. Like Motorola. And Dell. Don’t forget HP’s Palm debacle.

And, yes, BlackBerry. The BlackBerry Playbook arrived a year after the iPad, but the software was missing huge, important things, like native email and calendaring. The tablet flopped, and the company wrote off a large amount of unsold devices.

The Bloomberg article reminds us that Heins has previously said he’ll make another Playbook if he can make it profitably. That statement is more in touch with reality: it’s possible that BlackBerry can’t make a tablet that is measurably better than what’s already on the market and do it at a profit. It’s hard to compete with Apple and Samsung at this point, given their strong mobile computing brands and deep supply chains.

Heins seems to be implying that smartphones will be more central to the computing experience, as Matt Rosoff argues here at CITEWorld. That’s certainly plausible, but the idea that BlackBerry will be the one to figure this out is harder to believe.

In any event, Heins’ biggest priority right now is promoting his latest smartphones and the new BlackBerry 10 operating system. The success or failure of those products, as opposed to the future of tablets, will determine if his company is around in five years.

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“Return rate statistics show that we are at or below our forecasts and right in line with the industry.”

On Friday, BlackBerry CEO and President, Thorsten Heins, refuted  reports from an analyst firm on Thursday that suggested BlackBerry Z10 return rates were very high. Analyst firm Detwiler Fenton & Co. told Bloomberg that in some extreme cases, returns were higher than sales for a given time period.

In a press statement, BlackBerry specifically called out Detwiler Fenton, saying the company “refused to make either its report to investors or its methodology available to BlackBerry, even after the Company said the firm’s findings were ‘absolutely false.’ “

BlackBerry will be looking for the Securities Exchange Commission and Ontario Securities Commission to review the situation and plans to submit a formal request to those agencies within a few days.

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Since then we’ve seen flagship smartphones, mostly running Android, with displays first at 4-inches, quickly followed by 4.3 and 4.5-inches, now up to 5-inches and even beyond. You’d think that’s great if people want larger screens on their phones, and according to T-Mobile, 77 percent of their customers do. But can this growth in Android flagship phone displays actually hurt the most used mobile phone platform? It already has lost at least one customer.

See you later, Android!

Sascha Segan at PC Mag is done with Android and screen sizes are the sole reason. After speaking with several phone manufacturers, the issue is one of “moar”, he says: Consumers in the U.S. and Canada equate value with phones packed with as many features and top hardware components as possible. We want more screen space, more functions, more of everything in our mobile devices. So based on the trend of larger screens, Segan isn’t likely to switch back to Android any time soon, if ever. As he put it:

“But the Android world has been seized by the tyranny of moar. To switch back, I need a decent one-handed phone. Like about 25 million other Americans and Canadians, I take public transportation to work, and I really like to play games standing up.”

I know Segan personally as we’re peers in our industry and often see each other at trade shows and launch events. Truth be told, we’re both smaller than average in size. And yet, while I understand his complaint, I’m actually fine with larger devices. Why the difference? I am, and always have been (even with the original iPhone), primarily a two-handed smartphone user.

Could others follow suit? It depends on how big phones get

Regardless, Segan makes an excellent point. In today’s market — and likely for some time — if you want a top o’ the line Android smartphone, you’ll either need hands sized like Andre the Giant (and pants pockets to match) or you’re going to use your handset with two hands in most circumstances. Who knows; small tablets might replace smartphones for many as our perceptions of portability evolve.

There’s an alternative of course: Android phones start getting too big for a large audience and consumers turn to smaller devices that run iOS, Windows Phone or BlackBerry 10. Obviously, one person leaving Android due to flagship phone sizes isn’t even close to being a trend. Looking forward, however, this could become an issue if handset makers continue down this path.

And I see no reason why those who make phones will stop with the “bigger is better” approach to design. The top selling Android phones these days tend to be larger than average. Add in the fact that we now have high-resolution 1080p display panels, and there’s even more room for phone screens to grow.

After all, after a certain pixel density, there’s little benefit to cramming more pixels in a smaller screen. The new 1080p screens should still look just as good to most people on a 6- or 7-inch device as they do on the 4.7-inch HTC One or 5-inch Samsung Galaxy S 4. Maybe “moar” is better for now? If not though, opportunities for Android competitors could get as big as the screen on Android flagship phones.

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In a statement on Wednesday, the Cyprus-based startup said the new version of its BlackBerry app, which was previewed in January, included free calls to other Viber users for those on BlackBerry OS5 and OS7, as well as “performance improvements” for OS5 and various other bug fixes. However, BlackBerry 10 – the make-or-break latest version of the platform – is not supported.

“BlackBerry is one of the most important markets for us and represents our third largest user base,” Viber CEO Talmon Marco said. “We are thrilled to bring this community free voice calling, letting them communicate freely with all of their important contacts across multiple platforms.”

The release means that, over two years after Viber first hit the scene, the only remaining major platforms on which Viber is a voiceless, text-and-photo-only service are Nokia Series 40 and Samsung’s Bada OS. The omission of BlackBerry 10 support isn’t as crazy as it might sound — most BlackBerry users will still be on older versions of the platform, and the company is still launching new BlackBerry OS7 devices in emerging markets.

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As service revenues decrease, BlackBerry is getting more of its revenue from hardware with 61 percent of sales from smartphones and, to a lesser extent, tablets. For the quarter BlackBerry shipped approximately 6 million handsets with nearly 1 million of those being the new Z10 handset. BlackBerry recently announced a 1 million unit order for the Z10 but did not clarify how many, if any, of those are accounted for in this most recent quarter. The company shipped 370,000 BlackBerry PlayBooks during the quarter.

On its investor call, BlackBerry President and CEO Thorsten Heins said investors should remember that BlackBerry is in the middle of a phased rollout, that sales are meeting expectations and that 235 carriers have been testing the new handsets favorably.

While the new phones’ rollout, Hiens says that legacy BlackBerry handsets will continue to generate service revenues to help fund the transition. And the higher average selling price of handsets — boosted by the new Z10 — is helping to offset any decreases in hardware sales. But this point could also add to BlackBerry’s challenges going forward. Most of the company’s growth is in regions such as Latin America and Africa where the market for an expensive flagship phone could be limited.

Even if the Z10 and upcoming Q10 handsets take time to generate more sales, the company says it is in good fiscal shape, now with $2.9 billion in cash, cash equivalents and short-term and long-term investments, which is up from $2.1 billion just three quarters ago.

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This would be a terrible blow to BlackBerry, which desperately needs BlackBerry 10 to succeed if the company as a whole is to survive. BlackBerry’s biggest selling point has always been its security, and indeed version 7.1 of the software was approved by CESG just last November. The only problem is that – according to both BlackBerry and CESG – the Z10 and its OS have not been nixed.

Here’s what CESG said:

“Discussions with BlackBerry are ongoing about the use of the BlackBerry 10 platform in government. We have not yet performed an evaluation of the security of that platform, but we expect to be issuing Platform Guidance in the summer. This will cover a number of platforms including Blackberry 10 (and the use of ‘Balance’).

“We have a long standing security partnership with BlackBerry and this gives us confidence that the BlackBerry 10 platform is likely to represent a viable solution for UK Government.”

As for BlackBerry itself, the company called The Guardian‘s report, and others repeating its claims, “false and misleading”:

“BlackBerry has a long-established relationship with CESG and we remain the only mobile solution approved for use at ‘Restricted’ when configured in accordance with CESG guidelines. This level of approval only comes following a process which is rigorous and absolutely necessary given the highly confidential nature of the communications being transmitted.

“The current re-structuring of this approval process, due to the Government Protective Marking Scheme review and the new CESG Commercial Product Assurance scheme has an impact on the timeline for BlackBerry 10 to receive a similar level of approval.

BlackBerry went on to point out that both the U.S. and German authorities have given BlackBerry 10 the all-clear, and it expects the British to do the same.

So what’s going on here? If you look very carefully at the wording of the denials, the anonymous sources that informed the original article may well have been correct – it could still be the case that the Z10 flubbed a specific test, resulting in CESG going back to BlackBerry and asking them to fix the problem. This would qualify as “ongoing discussions”, and when CESG says it has “not yet performed an evaluation of the security of that platform”, those words could be taken to mean the full evaluation has not yet been completed.

However, it is certainly not the case that the Z10 and BlackBerry 10 have been rejected outright by the UK’s spooks and their vetting processes. We’re probably looking at a situation where BlackBerry will update the platform, and CESG will take another look before drawing firm conclusions.

For now, BlackBerry can continue to claim the security cred it so desperately needs.

Disclosure: Guardian News & Media, which publishes The Guardian, is a minority investor in GigaOM.

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The latest competitive jab came in an interview with The Australian Financial Review, in which BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins gave Apple its due, but also suggested iOS was getting a bit long in the tooth:

“Apple did a fantastic job in bringing touch devices to market … They did a fantastic job with the user interface, they are a design icon. There is a reason why they were so successful, and we actually have to admit this and respect that,” Mr Heins said.

“History repeats itself again I guess … the rate of innovation is so high in our industry that if you don’t innovate at that speed you can be replaced pretty quickly. The user interface on the iPhone, with all due respect for what this invention was all about is now five years old.”

He’s not incorrect: The iPhone’s basic user interface design — with the single home button, pinch/zoom gestures and grid of icons — has not changed since the iPhone arrived in 2007. There have been yearly updates of course, and several significant changes to the software since then, like the App Store, Notifications and Siri, but the basic hardware and user interface has stayed consistent over time. Obviously Apple subscribes to the don’t-fix-what’s-not-broken school of thought; it’s sold more than 500 million iOS devices on that design.

But Heins is trying to imply that Apple is back on its heels and is out of touch with the latest mobile trends. This, obviously, is part of Heins’ job: to market his company’s last-gasp attempt to reinvent itself with BlackBerry 10 in whatever manner necessary. Apple very likely doesn’t care what he thinks. But what’s so interesting about his comments is how it’s not just Samsung, Apple’s only serious mobile hardware competitor, whose marketing department has latched onto the “Apple is finished” or “Apple is off its game” meme.

SVP of Marketing Phil Schiller introduces the iPhone 5.

As Jean-Louis Gassee pointed out in this week’s Monday Note, Apple is selling a lot of smartphones and making a lot of money, but it is losing the “war of words.” Samsung senses the growing sentiment repeated online and on cable television shows that because Apple doesn’t have a brand new product right-this-moment, it is no longer innovating. That sentiment is why BlackBerry feels emboldened to weigh in too. And Apple started to play into this, but only halfway: without a brand new product to crow about, but with a lot of buzz leading up to its competitor’s big launch last week, it had SVP of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller call up selected journalists to bash Android.

The incident didn’t go over well at all. It appeared to many of us that Schiller sounded defensive and a little desperate. With new iPhones, iPad and Macs introduced in the fall, Apple is between product cycles right now, and it doesn’t have an event on the calendar that will draw back attention to what new thing the company may have come up with. The lack of buzz in the market it essentially created is certainly not something Apple has encountered very often over the last five years.

Trashing its mobile competition seems somehow petty for Apple because of its position. But obviously the company should fight back. As Gassee suggested, Apple needs to rethink its usual posture about criticism and competition: “Perhaps it’s time for senior execs to rethink the kind of control they want to exercise on what others say about Apple. Either stay the old course and try to let the numbers do the talking, or go out and really fight the war of words.”

And it appears Apple has decided to claw back with the help of its marketing department. This weekend it launched the “Why iPhone” campaign to remind iPhone users thinking of switching and potential new customers of the iPhone’s legacy and what it can do.

It’s no “I’m a Mac” campaign — yet. We’ll see what else Apple may have planned. But it’s at least a sign Apple is not going to let the tables be turned and allow itself be painted as the stodgy John Hodgman character to its competitors’ cool underdog Justin Long.

The former Research in Motion once occupied an Apple-like position at or near the top of the mobile world: the BlackBerry was at one time synonymous with smartphone. Five years later, the company is scrambling to remain relevant. Now, while it’s hard to imagine the iPhone falling from grace right now, someone some day will do to the current iPhone what Apple did to the BlackBerry in 2007.

The next big innovation in design or technology — not just PR jousting — is what will dictate the next five years in mobile.

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AT&T has set the price at $199.99 with contract for the Z10, which is the general going rate for any flagship phone. And as the first BlackBerry 10 handset, complete with competitive hardware, this surely is the BlackBerry flagship.

I’m inclined to agree, however, with Chris Davies at Slashgear, who thinks $200 for the Z10 may be too much. Sure, the BlackBerry faithful will be happy with this device at $200, but it’s a tougher sell at that price for those happy with an iPhone or Android handset. The platform still has some catching up to do in the app store, for example. Yes, you can sideload Android apps, but the process is convoluted enough that most consumers aren’t likely to do so.

In terms of communications the Z10 surely excels, thanks to the BlackBerry Hub. That makes sense, given BlackBerry’s rich messaging history. And the gesture-based user interface is enjoyable to use. Is that, plus the BlackBerry name, worth $200 to a large U.S. audience? Sound off in the comments and let me know what you think; I suspect the Z10 would be a much better seller at $149.99 with contract.

This post was updated at 8:36 am to reflect that new customers can also pre-order the Z10.

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It’s not too difficult to believe the phone’s upcoming availability on AT&T, however; in fact, it reads like a planned leak to me, in order to build up more buzz for the new BlackBerry platform and phone.

When the new Z10 debuted in January, BlackBerry officials didn’t provide U.S. availability dates — that’s for the carriers to do — but offered expectations of a March time frame  Indeed, T-Mobile has said prior that it plans a mid-March launch. Verizon has yet to make any availability announcements while Sprint is passing on the Z10; it is opting for the Q10 handset with hardware keyboard.

Regardless of the exact launch dates, I’m keenly interested in how well the Z10 sells in the U.S. Currently available in Canada and a few overseas countries, there’s a bit of a debate on actual sales. Some analysts are reporting poor sell-through rates while others suggest sales are great. We have already seen some price cuts on the Z10 from one major U.K. outlet, which tells me there may be too much unsold inventory in certain areas.

Another reason U.S. sales are of interest: Apple’s iPhone and Google Android phones make up a massive 90.1 percent of smartphone ownership here. My usage of the Z10 didn’t show me reasons for many smartphone owners to switch away from the current incumbents, yet some reports indicate that 30 to 50 percent of sales are to “switchers.” That sounds high to me —  and is still unconfirmed — but perhaps U.S. sales of the Z10 to current iPhone and Android handset owners will prove me wrong.

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