SAN FRANCISCO – BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd. unveiled a new operating system Tuesday in hopes of grabbing some attention away from the iPhone and Android phones.

The new BBX system combines existing BlackBerry elements with RIM’s previously announced QNX operating system for phones and tablet computers.

RIM said BBX will incorporate the reliability and security features of QNX – which RIM snagged in 2010 by purchasing QNX Software Systems. It will also enable software developers to create more advanced, dynamic apps for the devices.

The Canadian company did not say when devices using QNX would be available.

RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis introduced BBX on Tuesday at the company’s annual developer conference in San Francisco. He began by speaking about the service outages that frustrated millions of BlackBerry users last week. He said the company restored service as quickly as possible and is working on figuring out the causes and “making this right” for BlackBerry users.

BlackBerry tried to soothe customers Monday by offering more than $100 worth of free software to each and giving some technical support.

The disruption came as RIM, once dominant in smart phones with its secure BlackBerry email service, has been losing ground to such consumer-friendly offerings as Apple’s iPhone and smart phones running Google’s Android software.

RIM sold 165 million BlackBerrys through August. Apple had sold 129 million iPhones as of June, but its device has been on the market a shorter time.

RIM has also lagged in the market for apps that run on smart phones and tablets.


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