BlackBerry announces new operating system at software developers conference

Research In Motion presented its new operating on Tuesday at their software developers’ conference in San Francisco. The BBX system is an expanded version of the software currently used, and will be installed on the next generation of BlackBerry smartphones and Playbook tablets. 

RIM is expected to launch their new line of BlackBerry smartphones early in 2012. They did not specify a more exact release date at the conference. 

The smartphones are expected to operate even more like mobile computers. Users will be able to juggle multiple tasks at the same time. The phones will also be Android-friendly in order to attract more software developers.

RIM, a one time market leader, now has a market value of around $12 billion. It used to be worth five times that.

Analyst Peter Misek says much of RIM's future depends on this next generation of smartphones. The announcement comes days after a global outage left BlackBerry users without service for days. The Canadian company has offered users $100 of free app purchases to compensate for the service disruption.