Day 2 was keynote day (read Day 1 recap). Or maybe that should be "We're tunnelling head long into the consumer market" day. They had the whole spectrum covered with Mike Lazaridis (RIM CEO) at one end and Will.I.Am (of Blackeyed Peas fame) at the other.

There were two main announcements surrounding the iPhone and Android threats in the consumer space:
1.        BlackBerry Application Center. This is to allow carriers to offer "strategic" applications as a virtual preload, and hence carrier based billing. My personal opinion here is that there are already too many virtual preload icons on the BB when I activate it, I guess now we'll get more.
2.        BlackBerry Application Store Front. Obviously a counter to the similar offering for the iPhone. 3rd party developers can submit applications to the store and have RIM manage payments, delivery, etc.

RIM also mentioned many, many times that Java and "web" technologies are both equal citizens [in functional parity] in the BlackBerry world. There were lots of quotes:

• "Web and Java are peers", Brenner
• "Java and Web both central to the platform", Brenner

With the BlackBerry only getting a decent browser starting with the Bold (aka 9000) this may take a while longer than RIM (and web developers) would like. It is quite amusing to hear RIM talk about 4.6 (Bold) and 4.7 (Storm) with gusto and almost relegate (the brand new, not yet certified by carriers) 4.5 device OS as a legacy platform. Until the next backward compatible OS is released (5.0 anyone?) and these new browsers get device penetration I think this is going to be difficult achieve this parity with anything except the most recent of  devices, but from an iPhone countering perspective I guess it makes sense. In a different session it was mentioned that ISV and 3rd party developers are usually 24 months behind the current whiz bag device OS. I'm surprised it is that soon. I would have pegged it at 30-36 months.

Continuing with the web "parity" conversation RIM invited MLB.com on stage to show a live demo of a pitch by pitch 9000 based application using AJAX and other new features of the >= 4.6 devices. Obviously the folks at MLB.com have studied the Darren Duke Rules of Work: "Don't work with children, animals or live IT demos". Once they did get it working it was an impressive demonstration and one would be hard pushed to tell this was a web applications and not a full Java application.

Speaking of the Bold, almost all non USA BlackBerry users at the conference are using the Bold. You can pretty much spot the USA based developers as they don't have one. Come on AT&T!, get with the program and release it in the US. Another interesting observation is that I would estimate only 65-70% of the developers here are using a BlackBerry. There are tons of iPhones being tapped and gestured during the sessions. That surprised me, maybe there isn't that much money in the iPhone application market after all.

There were a lot of slides indicating 20 million subscribers and 150,000 BES installs. We specifically target enterprises so it is good to see the continuing number of BES installs rising. Yesterday 20 million may have looked good, but Apple sold almost 7 million iPhones in Q4 alone. And RIM want to get into the consumer market?

Next up were the development tools. No time lines on these ("over the next several quarters"), but future technologies include Gears, SQLite and Web Signals. My personal favorite is the ability to now use preprocessors instructions to control the building of Java applications for different device OS levels. RIM have used this in house for a long time, and now partners and developers have this functionality. Developers new to the platform owe a great deal of thanks to Alliance Members (specifically at WES 2008 partner sessions, including but not limited to the folks at Plazmic Games, DevelopIQ and STS) for repeatedly begging for this and RIM for listening.  My personal opinion is that this is the single biggest announcement to date. Oh and they are opening up the bug database some too.

There was also a re-release of the new developer program. These have been around for a few months now, including RIM moderated forums. Since Mike Kirkup took over this area the difference is night and day. Again Kudos to RIM for working to improve (and indeed to Mike for actually improving) an area that was previously lacking.

Some other cool stuff percolating in the labs was shown. Specifically a JSF BlackBerry tag library. This has the potential to have huge positive ramifications for developers. The tags will automatically adjust to the underlying device and the functionality it has available to it. This is a very compelling option for the future, think MDS Runtime on steroids

Finally (as I posted/gloated about yesterday here) RIM gave every attendee the option of one of three new devices:

• Bold
• Pearl Flip
• Storm

People choosing the Bold or the Flip were able to pick it up that day. As the Storm is not yet GA, (and that is what I picked) it will be shipped up to 30 days after it is actually released..