Methinks Blackberry should take it’s own advice. It’s never smart to call your potential customers stupid especially if they “mean business.” They didn’t buy from you right?
(Via The Loop)
Beleagured Doesn’t Begin to Describe It
Ian Austen, reporting for the NYT:
Research in Motion said on Thursday that a new line of BlackBerry smartphones that it hoped would turn around its flagging fortunes will not come to market until late next year.
It was the latest, and perhaps most significant, setback in a string of product delays and missteps from the company.
In the meantime, profits are down 70 percent. I love to say “I told you so”, so: I told you so.
(Via Daring Fireball)
Blackberry Alums
My good friend, fellow MIT alumnus and intellectual property attorney extraordinaire, Tony Sebro, summed up his experience with his Blackberry. The picture ain’t pretty and it is emblematic of the problems facing RIM.
RIM, You’re Done Here
RIM’s legacy is writ large on the world around us. Almost every major enterprise mobile system is patterned on their excellent email and PIM solution. But they are now slaves to their own success. They can’t sell anything other than a keyboard-candybar phone in an era where the keyboard is increasingly irrelevant or hidden away until needed. This failure of imagination in both consumer and manufacturer is their curse. In a world where every phone is smart and every phone does email, there is little to recommend any RIM phone over any other. It’s over and now we’re just waiting for the buy-out and inevitable disappearance of one of the greatest mobile companies in modern memory.
(Via MobileCrunch.)
It’s so often a mistake for your current customers to determine your product roadmap. Current customers can be a fickle bunch. You need to figure out what future customers will want. I’ve often heard that the “only” reason my friends stick with their Blackberries is for BBM. When the one thing keeping your customers is a service that can be and is now replicated, you have a serious problem. You need to be different in a way that motivates your customers to pay you and not someone else.
Because We Don’t Have an App for That
RIM CEO: Apple Is Wrong for Having an App for That:
”‘So you reject the appification of the Web?’ asked Summit host John Battelle. ‘Correct,’ Balsillie said, challenging Apple’s ‘there’s an app for that’ slogan for its iPhone App Store, which has more than 300,000 applications.
Balsillie’s comments were tinged with a note of bitterness in the wake of unprovoked attacks on RIM’s business by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. One month ago, Jobs appeared on Apple’s fourth-quarter earnings call to tout how Apple had passed RIM in smartphone sales for the quarter.”
(Via eWeek – RSS Feeds.)