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500 Startups Grad OneSchool Raises $750K For College Student-Focused App

Posted: 24 Jan 2012 05:00 AM PST

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OneSchool, a free mobile app for college students which provides easy access to maps, course schedules, directories, bus routes, news, student groups and more, is announcing its official launch today in eight universities around the U.S. The company is also revealing it has raised $750,000 in seed funding from 500 Startups, Learn Capital and Magnolia Ventures.

The startup, which had the honor of being the first to raise angel funding after participation in the minority-focused accelerator called NewMe, also graduated from 500 Startups‘ fall class this past October.

For those unaware, what OneSchool aims to offer is a single, mobile destination for college students to find everything they need about their campus. This includes the above-mentioned student directories, course listings, maps, groups, etc. There’s even a bulletin board-like feature dubbed the “Wall,” which is like a dumbed-down version of Facebook’s own Wall, supporting only text posts and image uploads (the latter coming soon). The application is available for the mobile web, iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone, and requires an @edu address to sign up.

Currently more social utility than social network, OneSchool has been up-and-running in these eight schools since late August, but was in “testing mode” until today. It now supports Penn State, Stanford, Yale, Columbia, UCLA, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Houston and the University of Waterloo.

To be clear, OneSchool isn’t partnering with the schools here – it’s pulling in publicly available information, and making it available in a useable mobile format. Based on demand, there are now 150 schools on the company waitlist, the company says. That’s one reason why they’re now considering creating a proces that would involve crowdsourcing techniques to get new schools online faster. However, no such tools are publicly available at this time.

In terms of market positioning, the company hopes to capitalize on the ubiquity of smartphones on college campuses today. “In 2008, just 10% of students across the country had smartphones,” says Co-founder and CEO David Adewumi, “but just last year, 57% of students were connecting to the Internet from their smartphone.”

Although some colleges and universities may have their own mobile applications, they don’t often include the kind of info students really need. The apps often are focused more on press releases and info for prospective students than on their current student population, the company found. There are also few schools that have even produced such an app, period. Says Adewumi, of the 4300 schools across the country, just 270 have a dedicated mobile application.

Clearly, the demand for this type of app has been high. At Penn State, the first school supported, OneSchool estimates that 83% of the iPhone and Android users on campus have adopted the app (based on current smartphone adoption rates). That’s 16,000 downloads out of 31,000 students, 18,000-20,000 of whom own a smartphone. Across the rest of the schools, around 50% of the undergrad population have done the same.

In addition to CEO David Adewumi (24), OneSchool’s young founders include CTO Pindi Albert (18) and Zach Johnston (20). David and Zach met at a fraternity at Penn State, where David’s father is a professor, and decided to create an entrepreneurship group there. Pindi, whose parents are also professors at Penn State, attended high school with David prior to joining OneSchool.

Adewumi says the idea for OneSchool came to him when he saw how much students were using their smartphones, including snapping photos of homework problems and texting them to friends for help.

“Students are really using their smartphones, but there wasn’t anything for them in a college-specific environment,” explains Adewumi. “Kids have had mobile phones for four to five years before coming into college. For most of these kids, their smartphone is their primary computing device…We saw that trend and realized there’s a big opportunity to deliver [OneSchool's content] on mobile devices.”

Chart: Android Is Catching Up To iOS In Mobile Video Views

Posted: 23 Jan 2012 11:31 PM PST

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With 250 million Android devices out there, growing by more than 700,000 activations a day, a lot of mobile video is watched on Android cell phones and tablets. It is not quite as much yet as on Apple iOS devices but it is catching up fast.

A year ago in January, 2011, Apple dominated mobile video views, with iOS devices accounting for 87 percent of all mobile views, according to data from video encoding and short-url service Vid.ly. Android had a scant 5 percent. By December, 2011, Android’s share of mobile video watching grew to 32 percent, while Apple’s shrank to 52 percent.

Vid.ly is a service run by Encoding.com, which launched a year ago. The data is only from its service, but is from a large enough sample (more than 1 million video views a month for each platform) that it should be representative.

CEO Invests Another $500K In CrowdOptic’s “New Social Medium”

Posted: 23 Jan 2012 07:02 PM PST

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Jon Fisher, co-founder and CEO of startup CrowdOptic, just told me that he has invested another $500,000 so that the company can build out what it’s calling a “new social medium.”

The idea is to create automatic clusters of people based on their location and line of sight. I met with the CrowdOptic team this weekend — they demonstrated the technology by whipping out their phones and taking photos of the same spot off San Francisco’s Embarcadero. CrowdOptic can detect when people are all looking at the same thing, and it sends a notification asking whether they want to form a discussion group, where they can share photos and comments.

The company actually launched in 2010 as a photo service for event organizers, and customers already include the Bank of the West Classic tennis tournament and the Infineon Raceway. Then it became more interested in augmented reality, delivering relevant content based on where your phone was pointing. Now it’s using that technology for more social purposes. This should still appeal to event organizers — it’s a way to help attendees interact with each other, and to deliver targeted messages and ads. (Other customers are using it as a way to coordinate their security, the company said.)

COO Jim Kovach told me that sports seem like an obvious match (after all, he used to be a linebacker for the San Francisco 49ers), but the vision is broader. For example, he said CrowdOptic is looking to partner with large Internet properties to provide instant crowdsourced content. Over email, Fisher was even more grandiose, saying that he wants CrowdOptic to be the underlying technology any time “crowds aim phones to memorialize happenings.”

Even though CrowdOptic isn’t trying to market an app directly to consumers, the demo reminded me of the first incarnation of mobile startup Color, which also allowed users to share photos based on proximity. Color flopped and is now working on a new product.

When I brought it up, CFO Tony Wu joked that CrowdOptic could almost be seen as the “anti-Color,” since it only raised $1.5 million in funding ($2 million with the new investment), compared to Color’s $41 million. He also argued that, unlike Color, CrowdOptic is connecting people who should have real reasons to interact — after all, they’re attending the same event, and they’re looking at the same thing.

Fisher also noted that he had only raised $3 million when his startup Bharosa was acquired by Oracle.

5 Things RIM’s New CEO Absolutely Must Not Do

Posted: 23 Jan 2012 03:04 PM PST

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Whenever a company appoints new leadership here in the tech world, the blogosphere seems to unanimously post about what the new top dog needs to do to make his or her company better. I promise, you’ll see dozens of headlines today talking about what Thorsten Heins must do in order to save BlackBerry.

In many cases, I agree with what’s being said. RIM’s in trouble, and without a new vision the company risks slipping even further behind the competition. You know… “the other fruit company.”

So rather than list out all of the things Heins needs to do to save the company (which, we can all agree, would take a really long time), I’m going to tell you guys the five things that Mr. Heins absolutely must not, without a doubt, under no circumstances… do.

That is, if RIM wants to keep selling smartphones.

Be Complacent

In less than a day at the post, Heins has proven himself to be quite the quote machine. My favorite: “I don’t think there is a drastic change needed.”

Alright, Mr. Heins. In that case we have a problem.

First, let’s just take a look at RIM’s numbers over the course of 2011. According to comScore, RIM slid from an 8.6 percent market share in January (as far as mobile phone OEMs go) to a 6.5 percent share in November. Where smartphone OSes are concerned, the dip was much more pronounced. RIM’s 30.4 percent share in January fell to almost half that, 16.6 percent, by November.

If these numbers can tell us anything, it’s that a drastic change is in fact needed. Yes, the BlackBerry brand did make a huge impact on the mobile landscape, and sure, there are still plenty of people in the Middle East and Europe (and even here) that heart their little BBM-machine. But whatever mind share the brand used to have is dwindling, just as the numbers are.

Sure, a superphone with killer specs would be great. A solid operating system? Yep, the company needs that too. But until leadership over in Waterloo realizes that enterprise-level security on messaging and a physical keyboard are no longer bringing in the “ooohs” and “aaahs”, nothing will change.

Lose Track Of Time

Anticipation can be deadly, as can forced urgency. RIM has struggled with both in the past year.

The company first announced it would be transitioning over to the QNX OS in April of 2010. It’s now 2012. Granted, the BlackBerry PlayBook is enjoying its QNX status (although the PlayBook has its own problems), but when we focus on smartphones the company has yet to offer or even announce a QNX-powered (BBX, or more formally BB 10) BlackBerry.

A big part of the mobile realm has to do with timing. If you know Apple’s about to release a new iPhone or that Google is about to pop out a new version of Android, you aren’t going to run out and pick up a new phone. No, you wait. It’s a fact these companies need to embrace.

If I’m a BlackBerry owner in April of 2010, and I hear that an entirely revamped, much more powerful OS is in the works, I want to wait to upgrade my hardware. But over the course of the year, Google launches Ice Cream Sandwich and Apple releases Siri and the iPhone 4S. And what do you know? RIM’s market share tanks to half of what it was. Obviously QNX wasn’t worth the wait for many.

I’m not saying the move to QNX is a bad decision. The opposite, in fact. But if you’re going to bet the company on a brand new OS, get yourself in gear and make it happen. And in the meantime, shut your lips about when it’ll be available and how awesome it is. You’re only frustrating your loyalists and asking potential Android/Apple defectors to come and check out… well, nothing.

But rushing is just as fatal, which is the story of the PlayBook. No need to relive that nightmare, but you know the important parts: no email, no contacts, no calendar, no PlayBook owners. It’s quite simple: If it’s not ready, we don’t want it.

Neglect Developers

RIM is more than just your basic OEM. The company provides services and, to an extent, builds out its own software. It’s an ecosystem, which is what every electronics company strives to be. But RIM’s ecosystem is one with a serious lack of wildlife — a tundra, if you will. Especially compared to the jungle of iOS and Android.

Developers take what is usually a very fundamental system and make it do everything and anything. Without the App Store, my iPhone is actually quite limited. That’s what owning a BlackBerry is like.

Compared to two app stores with well over half a million apps each, RIM’s BlackBerry App World boasts just 38,363. Unfortunately, at least 5,000 of them are visual themes. RIM’s own services like BBM are great but compared to other platforms, such a small selection (even with BBM) is a tough sell.

The good news is that any app built for PlayBook 2.0 will also run on BB 10, so in that way, RIM can double up on developers. Still, you need developers to build before you can run their app on both tablets and smartphones, and if I were a developer I’d already have lost interest. RIM needs to take note of this and create some incentives quickly.

If you have an iPhone or Android device, there’s probably an app for that.

Ignore Employees

Perhaps the greatest mistake that former RIM leadership made was to ignore the folks that comprise the company. I say it may be the biggest because who knows what kind of mind-blowing ideas and game-changing opportunities RIM has passed up under old leadership. In the past year, numerous open letters from both curernt and ex-employees have pointed to the same thing, over and over again: Mike and Jim didn’t listen to the lower level.

RIM has plenty of young guns, I’m sure, who are much more in tune with what today’s consumer wants from their smartphone. In fact, many of them probably grew up in a world where mobile phones were ubiquitous and smartphones are the growing norm, which can’t be said for Mike, Jim, or Thorsten.

But that’s not really the point. The point is that every single one of his new employees will be looking to see if he’s Mike/Jim’s new puppet (especially after this morning’s comments). They’re all waiting, likely pregnant with ideas on how to better the company, to see if he’ll turn an ear to them or not.

Hopefully he’s got his listening ears on.

Follow

It’s easy to follow when you’re already behind, but Mr. Heins must resist. It would be easy to follow Apple and Android because that’s largely what the company has been doing since 2009, when it launched a competing app storefront a year after Apple launched the App Store. But I’m less worried about that.

After the comments he made earlier today, namely that no change is needed, it would seem that Heins is already on Lazaridis and Balsillie’s team. The problem is that they refused to look forward, instead focusing on their glorious past. By saying that no change is needed, Heins is basically agreeing with them and telling the board, investors, and BlackBerry owners that the company has no real plans to compete in this landscape.

While the spec is dead (and megapixels don’t really mean that much in terms of picture quality), I remember the names Titan 2 and Xperia S because HTC and Sony hooked up these phones with 16- and 12-megapixel sensors. In the past year every flagship has had an 8-megapixel camera, and while I don’t think that either of these phones are a huge upgrade, they’re still the first of their kind.

It wouldn’t hurt RIM to try to be first at something. The company has likely forgotten the feeling of being first, which means they’ve likely also forgotten the value of it.

But everyone, most importantly the consumer, loves to be first.



No “Drastic Change Needed”? Looks Like RIM’s Stockholders Disagree

Posted: 23 Jan 2012 01:48 PM PST

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Good news: You’ve been promoted to CEO! Bad news: Public perception of your company has tanked over the past few years, and your stockholders are looking at you to save the day. What ever you do first, just hope that you don’t give the world that sound bite that suggests you think everything is okay and that nothing at the company needs to change. Whoops!

Less than 24 hours after RIM’s executive shakeup, the company is already seeing its first “drastic change”: its stock price.

After opening the day at $17 (down from $62.69 a year ago, a drop of about 75%), the effects of the incoming CEO’s first (surprisingly defensive) teleconference call began to spread. To put it gently, it was not well-received. By closing time, the stock had dipped another $1.44. That’s a drop in the bucket for most mammoth tech companies — but for the already bruised RIM, that works out to another 8.5% lost.

I’m actually surprised it didn’t tank further. If I was someone who still had money in RIM (un-disclaimer: I’ve got no money in anything), I’d have lost my last shred of hope by noon today. If RIM’s new CEO really thinks that something doesn’t need to change, he’s probably just about the only one left.

Does Your Business Need Mobile Apps? Bizness Apps (& More) Give You The Premium Tools

Posted: 23 Jan 2012 12:53 PM PST

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Let’s say you want to give your small business a mobile presence. You’d like to develop some mobile apps, but you don’t have the time, money, or technical skills to do it yourself, and you’re not too excited about the idea of paying a developer an armload to do it for you. Of course, on the other hand, you may be willing to pay a little more of a premium to have someone else do the work for you, work with you directly, and walk you through the process, customizing your app as you go.

That’s the essence behind Bizness Apps, a California startup founded by a couple of college friends, which wants to make it easy for small businesses to develop their own mobile apps. (Read our prior coverage here.) Beginning with its launch in 2010, Bizness Apps has developed a white label program, or a mobile app company in a box, to let individuals and companies use its platform to build mobile apps for existing clients or SMBs in their local area.

Because the software is white-labeled, resellers are able to set their own price and include a set up fee to accommodate for consulting with local businesses in person — for that extra element of hand-holding, when necessary. Bizness Apps has resellers all over the globe (in just nine months, the startup was reaching 1,000 applications, in 10 languages, and over 20 countries) that go into businesses in person, ask questions, design the app, teach them the platform, and manage everything for a premium fee.

But even for resellers, Bizness Apps’ prices are pretty low, starting at 65 percent off. And that’s one of the startup’s big value propositions — while most app builders require upfront set-up fees as high as $2,000, Bizness Apps lets SMBs develop mobile apps for either iOS or Android, starting at $39, while those looking to do both pay $59. Users can also create mobile experiences for the Web on iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile etc., going native or HTML5 for an extra $10 a month.

It’s pretty affordable, and if SMBs aren’t happy with their product, Founder Andrew Gazdecki says they’ll build it for them. While many app builders are designed for developers or graphic designers, Bizness Apps targets the non-technical and the small business owners alike. Thus, using its service doesn’t require any programming knowledge, and it offers features that are designed to help SMBs attract new customers and retail loyal ones — with the likes of loyalty coupon systems, mobile food ordering, a mobile shopping cart, one-touch calling, push notifications, and so on.

This functionality has seen the young startup gain some great traction early on — impressive considering the founders are all under 25 and have only raised $100K. The startup is now powering over 3,000 apps worldwide, and recently reached a $1 million dollar annual run-rate. In December, the team added VP of Business Development at AMEX, Jennifer Byrne to its advisory board.

Today, Bizness Apps is adding even more customization options to its app builder, as it launches “Bizness Apps Premium”, with the goal of enabling SMBs to take full control over their app’s look and feel. The new Premium plan offers customization of an app’s layout, colors, buttons, header, icons, fonts, and it won’t cost users anything extra.

Of course, Bizness Apps is not the only startup out there offering DIY mobile apps. Readers also may want to check out Cashew, which lets you build your own apps for iOS and Android and preview them on your mobile device — or AppsGeyser, a free, DIY service that allows users to convert any web content into apps for Android, and monetize that content.

There’s also the Italian startup, Apps Builder, which also looks to enable businesses to quickly create mobile apps and monetize their content by selling it or inserting ads. But the real differentiator for Apps Builder is its WordPress plugin that allows bloggers and site administrators to convert their content into native apps for iOS, Android, and the Web.

It’s free, self-service, and founder Daniele Pelleri tells us that the startup recently released its new CMS, which enables users to download a zip file, as they would for WordPress, and host the CMS directly on their own servers — to provide that higher level of security not always native to reselling programs. Apps Builder’s entire service, too, is pretty affordable, starting at $19 per month.

There are some great options out there for individuals and small businesses looking for affordable, non-technical ways to build their own native and web mobile apps. Check ‘em out.

Thanks To Santa, Tablets And E-Readers Are (Almost) Everywhere

Posted: 23 Jan 2012 12:28 PM PST

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Ownership of tablets and e-book readers saw a big spike over the holidays — in fact, it nearly doubled in the United States, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project.

The study was based on telephone surveys conducted in mid-December and January, which found that ownership of both device types nearly doubled in just a month. Now a total of 29 percent of US adults own a tablet or an e-reader, or possibly both.

The jump follows a period during the fall of 2011 where the numbers seemed relatively stagnant. Over at The Atlantic, Megan Garber uses that fact to ask if these sales are just a fad. Her comparison to Tickle Me Elmo feels like a bit of a stretch, and I don’t think there’s anything unusual about gadgets seeing sales growth over the holidays, but she’s probably right to be wary of premature pronouncements on the inevitability and ubiquity of tablet ownership.

The study also examines the differences between each device. As a percentage of total population, tablet and e-reader ownership seem to be be marching in lockstep, but the demographics aren’t the same . While both tablet and e-reader ownership skews heavily toward those with more education and higher incomes, the difference isn’t quite as dramatic for e-readers, Pew says.

1-Month Old BuzzDoes Scores $750K For Mobile App Marketing Platform

Posted: 23 Jan 2012 09:00 AM PST

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BuzzDoes, a newly launched word-of-mouth marketing tool for mobile app developers, has secured $750,000 in seed funding from angel investors and Proxima Ventures. The tool, which operates as a drop-in SDK (software development kit), allows developers to add a viral recommendation feature to their application using a single line of code.

Once installed, app users are “incentivized” (meaning rewarded), for recommending the app in question to their friends.

Getting a mobile app noticed in the increasingly crowded mobile app market is more difficult than ever, with some 600,000 iOS applications filling up the iTunes App Store’s shelves, and around 400,000 apps on Android. Although many companies have been experimenting with different means to get their app noticed, word-of-mouth recommendations from trusted sources (e.g. friends, trusted sites, etc.) is one of the only consistently proven methods that can help boost an app’s ranking.

Essentially, BuzzDoes is trying to kickstart the typically organic viral recommendation process where users tell friends about great apps they should try. To do so, app developers using BuzzDoes can choose to reward users who share an app with friends. The rewards come in the form of BuzzDoes points that users can redeem for cash (via PayPal), or users can donate the points to a charity instead. The secret sauce for this startup, however, is not just the sharing feature – it’s that BuzzDoes is also able to detect when a new user downloads and app because of the recommendation.

At first glance, the idea for a “recommendations-for-rewards” type mechanism feels like it could get a little spammy, but the way it’s implemented sounds rather smart.  When a user enters the section of the app where they can make the recommendation, they’re also able to see which apps their friends are downloading, something that adds a social element to the app discovery process. If they’re interested in downloading one of the other apps here, they just tap the app in question and their friend gets the points. For developers, it’s a win because they get new users, but for the app customers involved, this sort of in-app discovery feature feels far less intrusive than mobile ads. In fact, it doesn’t really feel like an ad at all – it feels like a feature.

Developers are offered the BuzzDoes SDK for free, and don’t have to pay unless they actually gain new users through the word-of-mouth recommendation network. That’s a different take than what traditional “incentivized” install companies (e.g. TapJoy, W3i, etc.) provide. In most cases, developers pay upfront for a set amount of downloads which are acquired through “marketing actions,” like offers or through downloading other 3rd-party mobile apps. According to BuzzDoes CEO Assaf Kolirin, the cost to acquire is as low as $0.20 per user, versus today’s averages of $1.50-$3.00 per user.

BuzzDoes launched a month ago at the AppsWorld conference in London, and went live just two weeks ago. It now has over 100 developers on the platform – something that speaks to today’s enormous and still unsolved challenge of user acquisition and app discovery.

The $750,000 in seed funding was raised from a few leading angels in Israel and South America, including  Avraham Gilat, as well as Proxima Ventures.

Polar Mobile Raises $6 Million For HTML5-Based Publishing Platform, MediaEverywhere

Posted: 23 Jan 2012 07:54 AM PST

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Polar Mobile, a digital media platform provider that builds apps for some of the biggest media companies, today announced it has secured an additional $6 million in funding. The new round, led by growth equity firm Georgian Partners, joins more than $3 million invested in the company previously from private investors, bringing its total funding to $9 million.

The company is also announcing its plans for a new product line called MediaEverywhere, an HTML5-based content distribution solution for smartphones, tablets and desktops.

Polar says that MediaEverywhere will help reduce its customers’ development time, so they can increase their monetization opportunities through its audience intelligence and personalization features. The HTML5-based apps created with MediaEverywhere will work on any device capable of running HTML5 code, not just phones and tablets, but on desktop computers too.

Adding in the desktop component is a slight shift for the company – its current product SMART is a white-label solution meant for creating apps across mobile platforms.  Specifically, SMART supports the iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry (including PlayBook), Windows Phone and Nokia.

Polar has also partnered with handset manufacturers and has existing commercial agreements with Microsoft, RIM, Nokia, Intel and Samsung.

Today, Polar counts several big media companies among its customers, including CBS Interactive, Conde Nast, Sports Illustrated, Shanghai Daily, Future Publishing, Rogers Media, Khaleej Times, TC.Media and The Wall Street Journal. In total, the company has worked with over 380 media brands in 12 countries, and its applications have seen over 1.6 billion pageviews served up to 11 million users to date.

Headquartered in Toronto, with a presence in San Francisco and Dubai, Polar expects to use the new funding to also double its team from 40 to 80 people this year and open new offices in New York and London.

The MediaEverywhere product will also roll out in 2012, first with existing customers before becoming more widely available.

LG’s Quad-Core 2012 Flagship Leaks: The Poorly Code-Named X3

Posted: 23 Jan 2012 06:57 AM PST

LGX3

Other than the LG Spectrum, LG didn’t have much to show off by way of phones at this year’s CES show. But that doesn’t mean that something special isn’t in the works.

In fact, Pocketnow reports that LG’s 2012 flagship will run a Tegra 3 quad-core chipset and go by the name X3, at least for now. The phone likely won’t show up on store shelves until spring or summer, but we should hear an announcement (including a retail name) come Mobile World Congress in February.

Other specs include Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, which will be a must with most phones released this spring, 16GB of memory (with an SD card slot), and camera fun for everyone. By that I mean an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 1.3-megapixel shooter up front for video chat.

The X3 will only sport three physical capacitive buttons along the bottom, rather than the usual Android four, but the phone still holds onto a number of important “fours,” like a quad-core processor and Android 4.0. I’m inclined to agree with the Inquirer’s opinion that the codename for this phone should be X4 rather than X3.

Last, but certainly not least, the X3 will sport a massive 4.7-inch 1280×720 display, NFC and the latest Bluetooth standard, 4.0. Pocketnow also reports that this bad boy will maintain a waist line under 9mm, which is impressive to say the least, especially with that reported 2000mAh battery.

The phone touts 21Mbps HSPA radio support, meaning we’re likely looking at T-Mobile or AT&T. That said, it wouldn’t be surprising in the least if the X3 had LTE support for AT&T’s brand new super fast 4G network.



New RIM CEO: “I Don’t Think There Is A Drastic Change Needed”

Posted: 23 Jan 2012 06:21 AM PST

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RIM’s new CEO Thorsten Heins has only been at the reigns for an evening, but he did a very “BlackBerry” job of presenting himself to the media this morning on his introductory media call.

It felt a lot like the media calls of yore, with Balsillie and Lazaridis at the helm. Especially when Heins referred to Apple as “the other fruit company,” noting the two companies shared strategy of vertical integration. Unfortunately, vertical integration of software and hardware is about all that these two fruits have in common.

Remember folks, Heins is coming off of a four-year stint at RIM. At the relatively young company, Heins worked under founder Mike Lazaridis and his partner in crime Jim Balsillie. That said, you can basically hear Lazaridis-style hubris in Heins’ comments.

When asked if there was anything Heins wanted to do in the past, but was held back from by his position, Heins confirms that he (along with the freshly removed prior leadership) doesn’t see much wrong with RIM.

“At the time, the company was growing but still acting as a startup,” said Heins. “But startup processes don’t scale. Every company goes through that phase. I had the opportunity to learn about RIM here. I don’t think that there is a drastic change needed. We are evolving our tactics and processes. I don’t feel that I was held back in any way to do what I needed to do.”

So, let’s just parse this out, shall we? Heins, as COO, was never held back in executing operational decisions or strategies. That means that anything he has wanted to do to help grow (and likely save) the brand, he could’ve already done. In other words, don’t expect a brand new BlackBerry or a brand new RIM.

But the new CEO had plenty more to talk about, namely that he has no plans to split the software and hardware businesses. So you can kiss dreams of an Android-powered BlackBerry out the window for now.

No, it’s BB 10 all the way, courtesy of QNX. When asked whether QNX is really “the thing,” Heins responded by saying that “QNX is not developing an OS. It’s an existing OS. It’s used already. It’s a multi-threaded OS. What that allows us to do is true multitasking. You can have many apps open at the same time and really run them real-time in parallel.”

He finished his shpeel by noting that QNX is “an extremely competitive OS today.” Of course, we have no way of judging that until RIM fiddles around with it, makes it usable on a smartphone, and then finally releases it.

Heins also mentioned that he’d be open to licensing BB 10 to other manufacturers, “if it makes sense strategically and tactically.” But again, other manufacturers would likely need to see consumer reaction to the OS before anything like that went down, which brings us back to RIM’s most pressing and important near-term goal: get BB 10 to market quickly.

[via Engadget]