BlackBerry's chief executive officer Thorsten Heins has criticized one of his biggest rivals - Apple Inc. for failing to refurbish the user interface (UI) of the iPhone to sustain in the aggressively competing smartphone market.

In an interview with Australian Financial Review CEO Heins said, Apple had the same user interface since first iPhone was released back in 2007 with a grid of icons that makes users access applications and that, he believes, it is now outdated.

"Apple did a fantastic job in bringing touch devices to market... They did a fantastic job with the user interface, they are a design icon. There is a reason why they were so successful, and we actually have to admit this and respect that," Heins said in an interview.

"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," he added.

CEO Heins also said that he must respect the iPhone as it holds a dominant position in the smartphone market surpassing the BlackBerry devices.

"The point is that you can never stand still. It is true for us as well. Launching BB10 just put us on the starting grid of the wider mobile computing grand prix, and now we need to win it," he said.

However, Heins also claimed that BlackBerry phones had surpassed the iPhone in one area, i.e., the ability of multitasking. 

Besides talking about the Apple's iPhone UI, he also predicted that BlackBerry World (app store) will have 100,000 native apps before the launch of its first BB10 device in the United States.

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