Last year I’ve put some stats for BB OS distribution here: BlackBerry OS distribution March/April 2011

Beginning 2012 I was wondering what is the OS distribution now with the BB OS 7.0 devices in the wild and especially since I wanted to do updates only for the devices running BB OS 5.0 and up.

So the distribution looks like this:

Making devices that run OS below 5.0 to be about 5-6% of all the devices. Of course this data is based on the users who use this specific app, but I am almost positive that this is pretty close to the generalized numbers.

The numbers look like this:

Related posts:

1. BlackBerry OS distribution March/April 2011
2. New England BlackBerry Developer Meetup group – first meetup notes

Here’s the chart of smartphones market share according to market research firm NPD

Quite interesting trend can be seen by the end of the year with huge spike in iOS sales. This of course can be attributed to the iPhone 4S and the holiday season. Apple products are still considered luxury and make great gifts as opposed to say Android which is considered more of a necessity.

UPDATE:
Additional source (showing the same trend though) from Nielsen
***Note the shift in timeline. Otherwise the graphs correlate.

Related posts:

1. Developers can see the device and app version on each comment on Android Market
2. Android vs. iPhone vs. BlackBerry Users
3. Is RIM going down?

If you are getting an error similar to the error below while trying to install and/or update BlackBerry SDK as a plugin for Eclipse

You are in luck!

Your problems are over as you found the solution. All you need to do is to clear the “Secure Storage” contents. To do that go to

Windows -> Preferences

Type secure, drill down to find the org.eclipse.equinox.p2.repository, expand this, and you will see the swdownloads.blackberry.com. Select this entry and delete it. This should resolve the issue next time you try to update/install the plugin you should be asked again for your credentials to the BlackBerry developer portal and once you put them in the installation should proceed normally.

Here’s how it looks in Eclipse:

Related posts:

1. BlackBerry Eclipse plugin 1.1 will fix some of the annoying problems
2. Eclipse marking SVN changes like Netbeans
3. BlackBerry development with Eclipse plugin – fixing corrupted *.jdp file

Just got an email from RIM with news and such and noticed the link to the OS center they run on their website to help developers choose which BB OS to target. After looking at the stats, I decided to make a comparison and see how the official stats from RIM differ from what I see within my applications.

Here’s the distribution published by RIM (dated March 3-d) I am not sure what they compiled into the March 3-d, i.e. what the timestamp of March 3-d actually means. Was it based on OS tracked for March 3-d, was it for last month, week or such. I couldn’t find that information.

And below is the distribution I have compiled from the data for the month of April 2011 (a month worth of data)

The breakdown by OS version is not identical but the picture is pretty much similar, except that my chart is much nicer I’ve got 6.1 devices (hmmm!) and the 5.0 OS section is a bit larger for my statistics than it is for the official statistics. But again, the official statistics are pretty much 2 month old now and actually since the rest of the sections pretty much coincide with the official statistics, I would assume that the number of OS 5.0 just got larger in these 2 month; which by itself is great news for BB developers. Hooray to that and I will try to keep up with statistics to see how the distribution shifts, maybe another post in couple month or when something interesting happens. Let me know in the comments if you’d like to see something like that in the future and whether it was useful for you.

Related posts:

1. BlackBerry OS distribution January 2012
2. BlackBerry Developer Conference 2010 is tomorrow
3. BlackBerry Eclipse plugin 1.1 will fix some of the annoying problems

I do an OTA (over the air) distribution for BlackBerry. Some time ago, I wrote here how to setup the mime types for the OTA distribution on Amazon S3. Luckily now, S3 has got a new and very useful web interface, as well as improved mime type detection. They still get the file types not exactly right, but close enough so that the OTA installation for BlackBerry works on “autodetect” settings just fine.

This is however not about S3, this is about detecting the proper OS version of the BlackBerry OS from the user agent of the browser using a few very simple regular expressions.  The code is tailored to PHP, but you can easily adapt it to any language that supports Perl style regular expressions, or you can adapt the reg. expressions as well based on this simple idea:

       $agent = //get user agent raw string



        if (preg_match("/BlackBerry/i", $agent)) {



            if (preg_match("/6\.0\../i", $agent)) {

                $newRelease['os_folder'] = "6.0";                

            }            

            if (preg_match("/5\.0\../i", $agent)) {

                $newRelease['os_folder'] = "5.0";                

            }

            if (preg_match("/4\.7\../i", $agent)) {

                $newRelease['os_folder'] = "4.7";

            }

            if (preg_match("/4\.6\../i", $agent)) {

                $newRelease['os_folder'] = "4.6";

            }

            if (preg_match("/4\.5\../i", $agent)) {

                $newRelease['os_folder'] = "4.5";

            }

            if (preg_match("/4\.3\../i", $agent)) {

                $newRelease['os_folder'] = "4.3";

            }

            if (preg_match("/4\.2\.1/i", $agent)) {

                $newRelease['os_folder'] = "4.2.1";

            }



            //Form your download URL here



        } else {

            //This is not BlackBerry user agent

        }

Nothing complicated, but this should give a start point to any one tying to serve appropriate bundle via OTA.

If you were to use S3, then it would basically be:

// The main link to S3

$downloadURL = "https://s3.amazonaws.com/YOUR_BUCKET/releases/" . $newRelease['version_folder'] . "/" . $newRelease['os_folder'] . "/YourAppName.jad";

Post your thoughts/corrections in the comments!

Related posts:

1. BlackBerry Upcoming WebKit Browser
2. BlackBerry PlayBook vs. Apple iPad – browser comparison

In some Java implementations/SDKs the Color class does not have the

int Color.argb(int, int, int, int)

method.

One SDK that, as far as I know, does not have this method is the BlackBerry SDK.

This code snippet can be used to perform just that:

public final class ColorBB {





    public static int argb(int A, int R, int G, int B){     

        byte[] colorByteArr = { (byte) A, (byte) R, (byte) G, (byte) B };

        return byteArrToInt(colorByteArr);

    }



    

    public static final int byteArrToInt(byte[] colorByteArr) {

        return (colorByteArr[0] << 24) + ((colorByteArr[1] & 0xFF) << 16) + ((colorByteArr[2] & 0xFF) << 8) + (colorByteArr[3] & 0xFF);

    }



}

Let me know in the comments if you have any improvement/modification ideas.

Related posts:

1. Java code to work with MillennialMedia, SMAATO and NexAge web advertising APIs

I wrote yesterday about my (mostly) negative experience working with these companies, but some of you might give it a try and maybe your results will be much better or maybe things have actually improved lately. In any case, the code here should get you up to speed covering most of the dirty work of working with these companies’ APIs.

I will post 4 classes here:

• AdGrabber -  main abstract class to give all other specific grabbers structure and save some repeating code
• MillenialAdGrabber - MillennialMedia specific grabber
• NexAgeAdGrabber - right, NexAge specific grabber
• SomaAdGrabber - the SMAATO ad grabber. Their ad platform is dubbed SOMA, hence the name

If you are using this code, please give an attribution when applicable with a link to this post.

AdGrabber

/**

 * Abstract class for ad unit grabbing. Inheriting subclasses will implement ad serving platform specific web service interfaces.

 *

 * Copyright: Creative Common Attribution http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

 */

public abstract class AdGrabber {



   protected HashTableExt _adFieldPropertyBag;



   public AdGrabber(HashTableExt adFieldPropertyBag) {

      if (adFieldPropertyBag == null) {

         _adFieldPropertyBag = new HashTableExt();

      } else {

         _adFieldPropertyBag = adFieldPropertyBag;

      }

   }



   /**

    * Inheriting classes have to implement the grabbing and the parsing of the ad from the appropriate ad serving web service

    *

    * @return

    *          - an {@link Ad} object populated with the values parsed from the appropriate ad serving web service

    */

   public Ad grabTheAd() {

      try {

         Document adResponseDoc = StreamUtils.parseRemoteXML(getRequestURL(_adFieldPropertyBag));

         return parseServerResponse(adResponseDoc);

      } catch (Exception e) {

         //Log error

      }

      return new EmptyAd();

   }



   protected abstract String getRequestURL(HashTableExt adFieldPropertyBag);



   protected Ad parseServerResponse(Document doc) {

      Ad ad = null;



      if (doc == null) {

         return ad; // basically = return null

      }



      try {

         if (gotProperAd(doc)) {

            if (shouldParseAsImageAd(doc)) {

               ad = parseImageAd(doc);

            } else {

               ad = parseTextAd(doc);

            }



            ad.setNetwork(StringUtils.getClassName(this));



         } else { // did NOT get a proper ad

            ad = new EmptyAd();

         }



      } catch (Throwable t) {

         //Log error

      }



      return ad;

   }



   protected abstract boolean gotProperAd(Document doc) throws Exception;



   protected abstract TextAd parseTextAd(Document doc) throws Exception;



   protected abstract ImageAd parseImageAd(Document doc) throws Exception;



   protected abstract boolean shouldParseAsImageAd(Document doc) throws Exception;



}

MillenialAdGrabber

/**

 * Ad grabber that interfaces with Quattro Wireless service

 *

 * Copyright: Creative Common Attribution http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

 */

public class MillenialAdGrabber extends AdGrabber {



   /* ------------------------------------------         PUBLISHING CONSTANTS       ------------------------------------------*/



   private static final String APP_ID = "YOUR_APP_ID";



   /* ------------------------------------------                                 ------------------------------------------*/



   public MillenialAdGrabber(HashTableExt adFieldPropertyBag) {

      super(adFieldPropertyBag);

   }



   /**

    *

    * @param adFieldPropertyBag

    * @return

    *          - The URL to be sent to the advertising web service

    */

   protected String getRequestURL(HashTableExt adFieldPropertyBag) {

      StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer("http://ads.mp.mydas.mobi/getAd.php5?");



      sb.append("apid=" + APP_ID);



      sb.append("&auid=" + BBInfo.getUniqueDeviceHash());



      sb.append("&uip=" + URLTools.urlEncodeBBForum(BBInfo.getIP())); // device IP 



      sb.append("&ua=" + URLTools.urlEncodeBBForum(BBInfo.getUserAgent())); // USER AGENT



      return sb.toString();

   }



   /* ------------------------------------------------            AD response PARSING        ------------------------------------------------ */



   protected boolean gotProperAd(Document doc) throws Exception {

      NodeList nl = ((NodeList) doc.getElementsByTagName("ad"));

      if (nl != null) {

         return nl.getLength() > 0;

      } else {

         return false;

      }

   }



   protected boolean shouldParseAsImageAd(Document doc) throws Exception {

      if (BBInfo.isTallScreen() || _adFieldPropertyBag.get(AdAllocManager.FETCH_IMAGE_ADS) != null) {

         if (!StringUtils.isEmpty(XML.getTextFromNode(doc.getElementsByTagName("url").item(0)))) {

            return true;

         }

      }



      return false;

   }



   protected TextAd parseTextAd(Document doc) throws Exception {

      TextAd ad = new TextAd();

      parseCommonAdValues(ad, doc);



      //parse the TEXT of the banner

      ad.setText(XML.getTextFromNode(doc.getElementsByTagName("altText").item(0)));



      return ad;

   }



   protected ImageAd parseImageAd(Document doc) throws Exception {

      ImageAd ad = new ImageAd();

      parseCommonAdValues(ad, doc);



      //parse the IMAGE of the banner

      String imageURL = XML.getNodeTextCumulative(doc.getElementsByTagName("url"));

      EncodedImage bannerImage = EncodedImage.createEncodedImage(StreamUtils.readRemoteStream(imageURL).getBytes(), 0, -1);

      ad.setImage(bannerImage);



      return ad;

   }



   /**

    * Parse common values from the responce like the:

    *  - tracking pixels/beacons

    *  - the click URL

    *

    * @param ad

    * @param doc

    */

   private void parseCommonAdValues(Ad ad, Document doc) throws Exception {

      // CLICK URL

      ad.setClickURL(XML.getNodeTextCumulative(doc.getElementsByTagName("clickUrl")));

   }



}

NexAgeAdGrabber

/**

 * Copyright: Creative Common Attribution http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

 */

public class NexAgeAdGrabber extends AdGrabber {



   public NexAgeAdGrabber(HashTableExt adFieldPropertyBag) {

      super(adFieldPropertyBag);

   }



   /* ------------------------------------------         PUBLISHING CONSTANTS       ------------------------------------------*/



   private static final String SITE_ID = "YOUR_SITE_ID";



   /* ------------------------------------------                                 ------------------------------------------*/



   /**

    *

    * @param adFieldPropertyBag

    * @return

    *          - The URL to be sent to the advertising web service

    */

   protected String getRequestURL(HashTableExt adFieldPropertyBag) {

      StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer("http://admax.nexage.com/adServe?");



      sb.append("dcn=" + SITE_ID);



      sb.append("&pos=" + getAdPosition(adFieldPropertyBag));



      sb.append("&ip=" + URLTools.urlEncodeBBForum(BBInfo.getIP())); // device IP 



      sb.append("&ua=" + URLTools.urlEncodeBBForum(BBInfo.getUserAgent())); // device USER AGENT



      sb.append("&f=" + "xml");



      sb.append("&u(id)=" + BBInfo.getUniqueDeviceHash());



      return sb.toString();

   }



   private static String getAdPosition(HashTableExt adFieldPropertyBag) {

      if (adFieldPropertyBag != null && adFieldPropertyBag.get(AdAllocManager.AD_POSITION) != null) { //if we specified the ad position - return the specified ad position

         return (String) adFieldPropertyBag.get(AdAllocManager.AD_POSITION);

      } else {

         // otherwise, use the "imageonly" or "textonly", depending on the display size, or manual override

         return (BBInfo.isTallScreen() || (adFieldPropertyBag != null && adFieldPropertyBag.get(AdAllocManager.FETCH_IMAGE_ADS) != null)) ? "imageonly" : "textonly";

      }

   }



   protected boolean gotProperAd(Document doc) throws Exception {

      Node adsNode = doc.getElementsByTagName("ads").item(0);

      if (adsNode != null) {

         int adCount = Integer.parseInt(XML.getAttributeValue(adsNode, "count"));

         return adCount > 0;

      } else {

         return false;

      }

   }



   protected ImageAd parseImageAd(Document doc) throws Exception {

      ImageAd ad = new ImageAd();

      parseCommonAdValues(ad, doc);



      //parse the IMAGE of the banner

      String imageURL = XML.getAttributeValue(doc.getElementsByTagName("ad:content").item(0), "url");



      EncodedImage bannerImage = EncodedImage.createEncodedImage(StreamUtils.readRemoteStream(imageURL).getBytes(), 0, -1);

      ad.setImage(bannerImage);



      return ad;

   }



   protected TextAd parseTextAd(Document doc) throws Exception {

      TextAd ad = new TextAd();

      parseCommonAdValues(ad, doc);



      //parse the TEXT of the banner

      ad.setText(XML.getTextFromNode(doc.getElementsByTagName("ad:text").item(0)));



      return ad;

   }



   protected boolean shouldParseAsImageAd(Document doc) throws Exception {

      Node node = doc.getElementsByTagName("ad:group").item(0);

      String adType = XML.getAttributeValue(node, "type");



      return adType.toLowerCase().compareTo("banner") == 0;

   }



   /**

    * Parse common values from the responce like the:

    *  - tracking pixels/beacons

    *  - the click URL

    *

    * @param ad

    * @param doc

    */

   private void parseCommonAdValues(Ad ad, Document doc) {

      // CLICK URL

      ad.setClickURL(XML.getTextFromNode(doc.getElementsByTagName("link").item(0)));



      // TRACKING PIXEL URLs - get only ones from the FIRST  node (in case there are more than 1 ad in the response, only the first should be processed and the rest ignored)

      Node adEventsNode = doc.getElementsByTagName("ad:events").item(0);

      NodeList nl = adEventsNode.getChildNodes();



      for (int i = 0; i < nl.getLength(); i++) {

         // If the tracking is of the "display" type - it is a tracking PIXEL URL

         if (XML.getAttributeValue(nl.item(i), "type").toLowerCase().compareTo("display") == 0) {

            String nodeName = nl.item(i).getFirstChild().getNodeName();

            if (nodeName.toLowerCase().compareTo("link") == 0) {

               String trackingPx = XML.getTextFromNode(nl.item(i).getFirstChild());

               ad.addTrackingPixelURL(trackingPx);

            }

         }

         // otherwise, if it is of the "click" type - it is a CLICK tracking URL

         else if (XML.getAttributeValue(nl.item(i), "type").toLowerCase().compareTo("click") == 0) {

            String nodeName = nl.item(i).getFirstChild().getNodeName();

            if (nodeName.toLowerCase().compareTo("link") == 0) {

               String trackingPx = XML.getTextFromNode(nl.item(i).getFirstChild());

               ad.addClickTrackingURL(trackingPx);

            }

         }

      }

   }



}

SomaAdGrabber

/**

 * Copyright © Comitic Software

 */

public class SOMAAdGrabber extends AdGrabber {



   public SOMAAdGrabber(HashTableExt adFieldPropertyBag) {

      super(adFieldPropertyBag);

   }



   /* ------------------------------------------         PUBLISHING CONSTANTS       ------------------------------------------*/

   private static final String AD_SPACE = "YOUR_AD_SPACE";



   private static final String PUBLISHER_ID = "YOUR_PUB_ID";



   private static final String SOMA_API_VER = "somaapi-318"; //This is the version of the API I used



   /* ------------------------------------------                                 ------------------------------------------*/



   /**

    *

    * @param overrideImageAds

    * @return

    *          - The URL to be sent to the advertising web service

    */

   protected String getRequestURL(HashTableExt adFieldPropertyBag) {

      StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer("http://soma.smaato.net/oapi/reqAd.jsp?");



      sb.append("adspace=" + AD_SPACE);



      sb.append("&pub=" + PUBLISHER_ID);



      sb.append("&client=" + SOMA_API_VER);



      sb.append("&devip=" + URLTools.urlEncodeBBForum(BBInfo.getIP())); // device IP 



      sb.append("&device=" + URLTools.urlEncodeBBForum(BBInfo.getUserAgent())); // device USER AGENT



      String adMode = (BBInfo.isTallScreen() || (adFieldPropertyBag!=null && adFieldPropertyBag.get(AdAllocManager.FETCH_IMAGE_ADS) != null)) ? "all" : "txt"; // "all" = IMAGE and TEXT; "txt" = TEXT only

      sb.append("&format=" + adMode);



      sb.append("&ownid=" + BBInfo.getUniqueDeviceHash());



      sb.append("&responce=" + "xml");



      return sb.toString();

   }



   protected boolean gotProperAd(Document doc) throws Exception {

      //return ((NodeList) doc.getElementsByTagName("ads")).getLength() > 0 && canProcessTheAd(doc);

      NodeList nl = ((NodeList) doc.getElementsByTagName("ads"));

      if (nl != null) {

         return nl.getLength() > 0  && canProcessTheAd(doc);

      } else {

         return false;

      }

   }



   private boolean canProcessTheAd(Document doc) {

      Node node = doc.getElementsByTagName("action").item(0);

      String actionType = XML.getAttributeValue(node, "type");

      return actionType.toLowerCase().compareTo("link") == 0;

   }



   protected ImageAd parseImageAd(Document doc) throws Exception {

      ImageAd ad = new ImageAd();

      parseCommonAdValues(ad, doc);



      //parse the IMAGE of the banner

      String imageURL = XML.getNodeTextCumulative(doc.getElementsByTagName("link"));



      EncodedImage bannerImage = EncodedImage.createEncodedImage(StreamUtils.readRemoteStream(imageURL).getBytes(), 0, -1);

      ad.setImage(bannerImage);



      return ad;

   }



   protected TextAd parseTextAd(Document doc) throws Exception {

      TextAd ad = new TextAd();

      parseCommonAdValues(ad, doc);



      //parse the TEXT of the banner

      ad.setText(XML.getTextFromNode(doc.getElementsByTagName("adtext").item(0)));



      return ad;

   }



   protected boolean shouldParseAsImageAd(Document doc) throws Exception {

      Node node = doc.getElementsByTagName("ad").item(0);

      String adType = XML.getAttributeValue(node, "type");



      return adType.toLowerCase().compareTo("img") == 0;



   }



   /**

    * Parse common values from the responce like the:

    *  - tracking pixels/beacons

    *  - the click URL

    *

    * @param ad

    * @param doc

    */

   private void parseCommonAdValues(Ad ad, Document doc) {

      // CLICK URL

      ad.setClickURL(XML.getAttributeValue(doc.getElementsByTagName("action").item(0), "target"));



      //TRACKING PIXEL URLs = the BEACONs as they are named in SMAATO network

      NodeList nl = doc.getElementsByTagName("beacon");

      for (int i = 0; i < nl.getLength(); i++) {

         String trackingPx = XML.getTextFromNode(nl.item(i));

         ad.addTrackingPixelURL(trackingPx);

      }

   }



}

Please let me know in the comments if you find this useful!

Related posts:

1. In App Advertising on BlackBerry with QuattroWireless, MillennialMedia, SMAATO and NexAge a bitter experience
2. Convert ARGB to int value (Java)

In the following video, the web experience on the BlackBerry Playbook is compared to the web experience on the iPad. It is clearly shown (the video is made by RIM) that PlayBook significantly outperforms the iPad. While these tests are definitely subjective since they are performed by RIM, so they could choose website favorable to the PlayBook and otherwise objectively-subjectively give the PlayBook some edge, the interesting thing to note is that the PlayBook uses the open source WebKit browser initially developed by Apple. It is a very interesting camparo nevertheless.

Would be very interesting to see the Samsung Galaxy Tab running Android participate in this comparison, especially since it has the same 7″ form factor as the PlayBook and it has Flash enabled of course.

Enjoy the video and let me know what you think!

Blackberry PlayBook vs. Apple iPad comparison:

Related posts:

1. Chrome OS and the iPad
2. Some notes on QNX – the new BlackBerry PlayBook OS
3. BlackBerry Upcoming WebKit Browser

This is a great comics I came across, very  concise and true!

I especially liked the dinosaur. BlackBerry are dinosaur outdated both in the features and especially from the development perspective. I covered this before in my Android vs. BlackBerry development post.

Related posts:

1. iOS vs. Android vs. BlackBerry vs. Windows Phones
2. BlackBerry Eclipse plugin 1.1 will fix some of the annoying problems
3. Android development vs. Blackberry Development

Related posts:

1. BlackBerry Developer Conference – subjective notes – note one
2. New England BlackBerry Developer Meetup group – first meetup notes
3. BlackBerry Developer Conference 2010 is tomorrow