With little more than a month until it unveils its new BlackBerry 10 smartphones and platforms, RIM has opened its new “technical review program” to more than 120 enterprise and government “customers,” seeding early pre-release software and devices for testing.
RIM says that it has invited 64 Fortune 500 companies to begin beta testing its BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 and pre-production BlackBerry 10 smartphones, giving them early access to “get them started” with the platform and allow them to weigh up whether the Canadian smartphone maker’s devices can dominate the enterprise market once again.
For RIM, it’s a chance to see how its devices and software works for its most important customers, allowing it to eliminate any major bugs before it releases it to the world in early 2013.
It’s been a busy few months for RIM; last week it launched the “gold” version of its developer toolkit for BlackBerry 10, helping developers push new apps for the platform; the company’s L-Series smartphone leaked in photos and on video, and the company found itself dropped from the NASDAQ-100.
So far, RIM is right on track with the schedule released last month. Now, it is getting more devices into the hands of companies and agencies with the budgets available to help the company make a dent in Apple and Samsung’s smartphone sales.
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