RIM Navigates New Direction with BlackBerry Maps

location based services

With the introduction of BlackBerry Pearl by T-Mobile this month, Research In Motion's (RIM) first device with a camera for picture and video and an audio player, the leading enterprise mobile device and mob-e-mail vendor also unveiled a new mapping application, called, of all things, BlackBerry Maps. The company behind the mapping and location based services for the new feature, which is intended to become a standard part of the BlackBerry OS from now on, is a veteran in the field, Tele Atlas.
Leveraging Tele Atlas map data, BlackBerry Maps directs users and works together with other BlackBerry applications to enable them to send maps via e-mail and launch them from contacts in their address book, for example.
PDAStreet recently got a chance to speak with RIM senior product manager David Heit to learn more about BlackBerry Maps and the company's intentions for mapping integration moving forward.
Heit explained to PDASteet that RIM views mapping as a fundamental feature that many people now need to have access. It wanted to provide a mapping function that fit into its general theme of wireless efficiency and compression, however. This means, as with many other BlackBerry services, the data isn't stored on the device, but is downloaded as needed.
"It is very much pulling it down," Heit said. "We are not pre-storing the maps on the device." BlackBerry Maps works very similar to Google Local Mobile, but whereas that service downloads full bitmaps, BlackBerry Maps promises better performance by going with scalable vector images.
With a services that use bitmap images you are required to download additional bitmaps as you zoom in and out of different areas. BlackBerry Maps, on the other hand, converts the graphical information on a single scalable vector image already downloaded. You're using more mathematical equations and geometry to describe the map.
"That way in doing that kind of a technique, we're getting about a 10-1 kind of efficiency over a bitmap approach in terms of data transmission. So, if I have to download a megabyte of mapping data via a bitmap, I only need 100 kilobytes on the scalable vector graphics," Heit said.
If you pick a location and zoom in and out in the application, Heit said you will see a difference in how BlackBerry Maps behaves. "Like street labeling is dynamic. So when you scroll around, the names will scroll down the streets. You're not faced with things having to reload. It's all a little bit more immediate."
There's the icon on the main page to request the map to location with BlackBerry Maps. Or you can ask for static directions from point A to point B, which you either enter or point at.
Additional capabilities of the mapping application include, for example, item menus that enable you to get maps to locations listed within the address book.
RIM already has a couple models with integrated GPS, which would come in handy with an application like BlackBerry Maps. Most don't, however. All the current models do support Bluetooth and are compatible with an external GPS receiver Heit referred to as puck.
"I can GPS equip that map. I can be driving around and I'm getting a current map of where I'm located."
While BlackBerry Maps doesn't perform dynamic routing, Tele Atlas, for example, offers its own application with that capablity, for example, but it doesn't use RIM's raw scalable vector data.
RIM is delivering an API for BlackBerry Maps that will allow third party develops to take advantage of the raw data available, however. Heit said to PDAStreet that RIM is seeing strong demand for this, "It is very extensible for a third party."
RIM's goal is to have maps available for world wide usage. They currently have maps for the U.S. and Canada, with everything else a work in progress.
If you have a BlackBerry that runs RIM's BlackBerry OS 4.1 you'll eventually be able to download BlackBerry Maps as an add-on application. Also, devices like the 8700 series, which run OS 4.1, will be upgradeable to platform OS 4.2, the version with BlackBerry Maps that is on the BlackBerry Pearl.
"And in future releases, moving forward, it will always be part of the standard release," according to Heit. "The Pearl was just the entry point for this application."
"You'll see additional applications released over time that just make use of it: In some ways that we'll anticipate, and other ways that we never anticipate."
Positive EarningsRIM share’s surged after the company beat estimates and raised guidance. It revealed second quarter earnings of second-quarter at $140.8 million or 74 cents per share, up from $129.8 million or 68 cents per share from the year before. Revenues hit $658.5 million.
The company added 705,000 more subscribers, bringing its total to 6.2 million. It expects to add another 800,000 next quarter, and increase earnings to 88 to 95 cents per share or between $780 and $820 million.
Reaction to the Pearl has been extremely positive. "The response to the product has been exceptional," RIM Chairmon and co-CEO Jim Balsillie said during a conference call. "Net subscriber account additions at T-Mobile in the weeks following the launch were significantly higher than we'd been seeing prior to the Pearl launch."
“We believe we may have one of the most successful BlackBerry products ever on our hands,” he added. RIM’s other operator partner’s “"are all eager to move forward with launch plans for the Pearl."