Let’s start with one question that I have done to friends in the last year:
Is BlackBerry maker Research In Motion doomed?
My short answer is Yes, they’re.
The writing has been on the wall for over 12 months – I had this conversation early this year with a business associate of mine that works in the marketing department of a third party RIM Enterprise server solution.
I feel that the same thing that happen to Sony, as the giant of electronics, is happening to RIM in the mobile sector.
Innovation
Such an important and revolutionary word. Blackberry advances have been few and non-radical when you compare them to its biggest competitors: Iphone and Android. Still, the enterprise world relies in its outstanding security platform for emails and communication,. but that’s about it. All their new development feel old and “being there, done that” kind of thing.
When most people defend their blackberries functionality and reliability I can’t help to remember all those business users that were stuck to the Lotus mail application at the beginning of the century. Most of them got stuck to Lotus because it was bundled with their corporation IT solution – Novell, IBM, etc. It was a terrible, or at least mediocre email client with no rich media or html functionality.
I remember developing emails blast campaigns and hating how bad Lotus Notes and Mail rendered even the most simple graphic.
Image
Once you’re product isn’t cool anymore, It’s time to start to think again about your entire communication strategy. Technology products thrive by its coolness and their absolute obsession by all early adopters. Without this, it’s just very hard to get people excited about how a new gadget or device would change their lives for ever. Apple’s communication tries to do it every time. Sometimes better, sometimes simply bad or not as effective as they think.
Blackberries latest media campaign was weak, if not bad in many levels.
I’m really not sure how the client could have given the green light for this campaign, but the media buying was quite impressive last year. Against all client’s advertising rules, not once we see the product or its functionality. How can someone get excited about a product if a character is not really excited about the product – Sometimes having real people is worst than having no people at all!
I’m not alone in my claims. Sadly I have never owned a Blackberry myself, but my commentary is purely an observation and perception of RIM’s products and lack, or lost, of leadership. There are again some news about a new product line with BlackBerry 7 OS coming out in a few months, although there it seems not to be a major update on the new OS.
To make matters worse, there’s a claim that the half a million PlayBooks units sold by RIM were not at full margins. – Perhaps at a very deep discounts without making real gains or profits for RIM.
Is it too little too late? Time will tell…