The write stuff from reseller to developer

The BlackBerry Tablet OS was built on the QNX operating system, which is deployed in a variety of enterprise and government solutions throughout the world. Adobe technology, including Flash and Air, were baked into that.

Opportunities: RIM’s heritage is in the enterprise, and it has made it clear the BlackBerry PlayBook — with the BlackBerry Tablet OS — will integrate with other pieces of the RIM stack, including BlackBerry Enterprise Server. Down the road, as early as this summer, RIM will also provide tools that will allow development of apps around its BBM messaging application on the BlackBerry Tablet OS — a potentially attractive aspect to this new platform.

Challenges: RIM is late to the game in the tablet space, and its smartphone business is disappointing the market with its sales — largely blamed on the success of the iPhone and Android devices. Investing resources in this platform, in such a competitive arena, is fraught with risks not seen with other development platforms.

Differentiation: BlackBerry is still a brand-name technology, and its market is among the most fiercely loyal in the IT industry. Resellers who build software apps to run

on the BlackBerry Tablet operating system for the PlayBook have the potential to tap into that loyalty and platform investment by customers even under the most competitive circumstances.

Platform: WebOS

HP has released its WebOS 3.0 software developer kit and it is gunning to win over resellers, software makers and iOS-focused developers. Here, HP has the potential to turn its reseller channel into a weapon against Apple — which has exhibited what many believe to be ambivalence towards resellers in the past.

The WebOS developer kit has what HP says is a seamless transition from the OpenGL/ SDL environment that iOS code writers use in the WebOS environment. Basic knowledge to get started building apps for the WebOS platform are fairly simple: JavaScript and HTML.