Research In Motion has released a new BlackBerry Mobile Conferencing application that aims to simplify the standard conference call process. Initially, only users of North America region can avail the application from the BlackBerry App World. ‘The Mobile Indian’ tried to contact RIM’s spokesperson in India to inquire about the app’s availability in the country but he was not available for comment.
Easy Mobile Conferencing is one feature that both Apple iOS and Google Android platforms have had from day one. Now, that makes us wonder what took RIM so long to add mobile conferencing features in BlackBerry OS.
The beta version of the app was launched by RIM two months ago with a number of features such as one-click-join, calendar integration, reconnection, easy conference scheduling, protecting host codes, and storing dial-in numbers.
The full version of the application has been designed to work out of the box with most existing conferencing services. It requires the device to run BlackBerry OS 5.0 or higher.
On installing the app you can join or create a conference call right from your calendar itself. Also, you can join a conference call with a single click. That really helps users to save time, in contrast to the conventional method wherein one needs to dial a specific number and then feed in a Password code to join a conference call.
RIM is out to compete with Android and iOS platforms, both of which are rapidly luring business users through easy-to-use features. However, there are core differences between the implementation of mobile conferencing on all three platforms — BlackBerry, Android and iOS.
All these platforms have an Add Call feature integrated right into the dialer. So when you call someone and want to add another person in a conference call, you simply have to select the Add Participant or Add Call option. However, mobile conferencing is much more complicated when one has to follow several steps to add users to a conference call. That’s where these single-click applications come into the picture.
Services like Google Voice, GroupMe and InstantMeeting have been available for quite a while. Now these applications provide cross-platform solutions and work seamlessly across devices. Apple iOS 4.3 update has brought some changes to conference calling and now users can join or create conference calls with a couple of taps.
Meanwhile, with its new Mobile Conferencing App, RIM aims to provide deeper integration of conferencing facilities for BlackBerry devices users. The BlackBerry Mobile Conferencing App stores several details related to the conference call, such as personal bridge information.
With touch based interfaces being more prominent on smartphones, users do look for no brainer or single-click usage applications instead of tedious features. Hence, we hope that each mobile platform developer comes out with its own version of a mobile conferencing app.