BlackBerry's Heins: Apple's iOS is a little long in the tooth
The company's chief executive says that Apple's user interface is "now five years old," indicating the company isn't innovating as quickly as it should.
BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins thinks it's about time Apple starts innovating again.
Speaking to the Australian Financial Review in an interview published today, Heins acknowledged that Apple "did a fantastic job in bringing touch devices to market [and] they did a fantastic job with the user interface," but he thinks the company might have become too complacent.
"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," Heins told AFR. "The user interface on the iPhone, with all due respect for what this invention was all about, is now five years old."
Heins' jab against iOS comes less than two months after his company announced arguably its most important software update ever: BlackBerry 10. That operating system, which takes full advantage of touch displays, is running on the company's Z10 handset, and will be available on the Q10 when that device launches later this year.
In his interview with AFR, Heins said that BlackBerry 10 actually beats out iOS in some ways, including with its multitasking, which he says, makes it much easier to run and use multiple apps at the same time.
Moving beyond the iPhone, Heins discussed his company's impending BlackBerry 10 launch in the U.S. this week. He says that when the Z10 hits store shelves, there will be 100,000 apps available in its application marketplace. Despite the rapid ramp up since its launch in January, the store's app tally is still a fraction of those in Apple's App Store and the Google Play marketplace.
