BlackBerry: Apple has "five year old" iPhone interface

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BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins is promoting the launch of the BlackBerry Z10 smartphone by taking Apple's iOS user interface down a notch, noting that the UI is now five years old.

BlackBerry is preparing for the consumer launch of its BlackBerry Z10 smartphone in the US later this week via AT&T, after previously launching the first of its BlackBerry 10 devices in Canada and parts of Europe. BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins continues to champion both the smartphone and the company's newest mobile OS and today in a new interview he put his sights on Apple.

In a chat with the Australian Financial Review, Heins said that he respected what Apple has done with its iPhone and its iOS user interface. However, he seemed to suggest that Apple was becoming too slow in terms of innovation since the first iPhone and the first version of iOS launched in 2007. He stated:

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. The user interface on the iPhone, with all due respect for what this invention was all about is now five years old.

(We would be remiss if we didn't point out that Apple first announced the iPhone in January 2007, and put it on sale in late June 2007, making closer to six years old.)

Heins pointed out that the BlackBerry 10 OS can run multiple apps at once, something that iOS devices can't do. Heins also said that he expects there will be 100,000 apps that will be able to run on the BlackBerry Z10 when it launches in the US on Friday, compared to 70,000 apps that were supported when the phone first went on sale in other parts of the world a few weeks ago.

And what about the company entering the tablet space again? The launch of the BlackBerry Playbook in 2011, before Heins started as CEO, has been viewed as a bomb, both in sales and in reviews. Heins hints it may be a long time before BlackBerry launches a new tablet, saying, "I want it to be really substantial and meaningful, and quite frankly it would need to be profitable as well."

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