It wasn't that many years ago I had a Blackberry Pearl. Then I had a chunky body one and then, jonesing for the next smart phone thrill, I shot the shark and went to Android because I couldn't afford an Apple IPhone. It wasn't too long after I had the 'droid that I realized through the genius and proliferation of applications that my Blackberry would always be part of my life...in its box on the right side of my sock drawer, silent and stoic.
When you have tools you want toys. And when you have no toys, or far too few especially in comparison to other well-endowed products, you look for an exit and go through it. I and many others gave Blackberry the raspberry and moved on with no sorrow and no second thoughts. So it was hard to explain exactly what I felt the other day, because it was neither, when I read press accounts of the launch of the Blackberry 10.
It's the device Research In Motion, RIM, the people who make Blackberry believe/insist will revive their holstered hopes for smart phone dominance or at least allow them to take their products and company off life support and get back in the game. The years since Apple and Android showed up have not been kind to RIM. But when you look at the story again, the new phone isn't the whole story.
RIM is now the company formerly known as RIM as they are changing their name to Blackberry because, well, because when you get right down to it since they can't make it better they'll make it different and pretend it's the same thing.
RIM, sorry, Blackberry, figured out what caused their market erosion. While I don't pretend to understand the deductive reasoning they used to arrive at their conclusion, the result is impressive and breathtaking in its simplicity.
There is/was a lack of agility and the continued inability to respond to a changing market place combined with a persistent insistence bordering on suicidal obstinacy. Combine that with an upswing in sales and market share by competitors that was rationalized as being cyclic in nature rather than the competitors' ability to adapt and overcome that had less to do with their continual innovation and more to do with your desire to wait for your turn to come around again. Let cool for five years, serves a hungry family.
Those facts it now seems had nothing to do with the virtual disappearance of both your entire product line and your market share (under 5%). All this time it's been the NAME of the company....Brilliant. Here's a free suggestion: why not change your name again, but this time change it to Oral Sex- wait for it because it's going to be your new slogan- because "Who doesn't like Oral Sex?" Capistrano here we come, gulp.
-bill kenny
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