RIM's BB10 Campaign Requires Some Serious Work 171
adeelarshad82 writes "With the BlackBerry 10 launch just around the corner, there is a lot of pressure on RIM's CEO to provide a 'Steve Jobs Moment.' However, given BlackBerry's 1.1% percent market share compared to the combined 92% share between rivals Android and iOS, it's a long road back. To add to the struggle, no other first-generation smartphone leader has been able to pull off this kind of rebirth. Palm and Symbian are dead and Microsoft is struggling. But, as one mobile analyst explains, RIM has a chance to carve out its own market with tomorrow's launch of BlackBerry 10 given that they get a few things right. They need to heavily promote their devices to CEOs, heavily promote the top apps to users, and most of all, they need to be able to explain why people should give it a look."
Should be interesting ... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll be interested to see how this plays out.
I suspect a lot of people have mostly decided RIM is a dead horse and moved on. You could offer me a BlackBerry for free, and I'm not sure I'd care. And the dirty looks I still get from the wife when her Playbook is crashing tells me she's not someone who would recommend any of their products.
If what they release is business-centric with a focus on connecting to an Exchange server, then I predict that the consumers who buy most smart phones nowadays will decide they're not offering anything of value.
It's become like the Amiga or SGI ... a couple of the die hard fans still saying how awesome it is and how we're all missing out, and a huge amount of people not interested.
Microsoft? (Score:2, Insightful)
So the crap-failure that was Windows CE managed to make Microsoft a "smartphone leader" and on top of that they are now struggling for a rebirth?!?
Wrong approach (Score:3, Insightful)
I maintain that they should be focusing on mobile security and management software, and should have been for the past several years.
Even as recently as last year, RIM had a reputation for security mobile data devices. The problem was, nobody wanted those devices. So instead of spending the fortune on building a new handset/OS, they should have spent time and money developing a decent mobile management server, with associated mobile clients for android, iphone and MS kit ( with plugins for the various data sources; exchange, groupwise, ect... ).
They could have parleyed their reputation on to the entire mobile market for business handhelds, instead of floating a NEW hand held in an already contentious market.
Re:Why to CEOs? (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't matter how dumb you think CEOs are on average (though i've got to say, our CEO is pretty smart in general, even if i don't agree with her on this one decision) they can have a massive influence on what direction a company takes. Whether it's deciding which platforms to develop software for or what brand of phone the company will supply or something else i'm not even thinking of, if you can convince a bunch of CEOs that your product is a great thing there's probably something they can do to help you out.
Re:Analysts saying the obvious? (Score:3, Insightful)
Blackberry needs to take 1 or 2 billion dollars and pay people to develop or port apps to their platform
Why? Developers have been flocking to the platform. BB10 will have >70,000 apps at launch. RIM's new developer tools are great and have been very well received. Their developer outreach program has also been a phenomenal success.
Why on earth would they spend a billion or two to pay developers to do what they're already doing?