Wednesday, 13 July 2011

Blackberry's are definitely past their use by date now

As I stated earlier this year my thoughts and feelings for Blackberry's, if you haven't yet read it you'll find it here:
http://jaytongarnett.blogspot.com/2011/02/blackberry-passed-their-sell-by-date.html

Just do a search and you'll see what I mean:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=blackberry+bad+sales

This link shows that RIM has lost 1.89% in one day! Last November their share price was almost $70 a share, today ? $27. Ouch.
http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/rim?countrycode=ca 

Things have really changed for the worse since then, the sudden popularity of Android and increasing iPhone sales have really reversed the Blackberry trend, a lot of people I know go for Android because they're cheap, do everything a phone does and everything that Android does too, more recent models are also much higher spec than the iphone 4, though that will even out for a few months when the iphone 5 comes out.

Research In Motion (RIM), seemed to have been standing still while iOS and Android zoomed past with blistering sales. Why? Well the iPhone 4 the the most 'desired' phone, probably the best selling single phone from a single manufacturer, too, counting all variants as one model as the only differences are storage capacities.

Android, well this is where Blackberry have really lost ground. Why? The number of OEM's flogging cut price handsets to high spec handsets. The thing about Android is that is can do just about anything because it's opensource(ish).

Blackberry, well it's been pretty lame is responding to these two main competitors. The best device to come from RIM has been the Playbook, but even then it's still not a finished product and needs more polishing. They should have waited to release it until it could run Android Apps and baked an email client into the device. Why didn't they? Because they have no vision. Why go and spend all that money and time on making an OS that runs Android Apps anyway? They should have climbed on board the Android train if that was their aim. Seriously RIM, what were you thinking?!

Not all Androids are equal.

Look at the HTC Sense UI, it is by far the best UI for Android phones, even their tablet runs 2.3 and has Sense layered on top. It's a fantastic device imo

Blackberry with all the R&D might could have done similar and been to market before anyone else and layered a great UI on top and it would have been way more polished than their tablet. But alas they didn't. Again they were too slow in the uptake. I almost feel bad for them, but I never owned a Blackberry and never wanted too.

I think it's a curse of the large enterprises, Microsoft got kicked too and as good as Windows Phone 7 is - it's just not selling well at all.

Apple take ages to patch iOS sometimes and release a new major version, what once a year? But they stagger device releases throughout the year, throwing their fans a bone every few months. It works well for them.

Google have got it right. Update, update, update, don't stop just keep updating and innovating. Chrome gets updated very regularly, as does Android and Google Plus. Pity OEM's don't follow suit, but then they are mostly large enterprises that are slow to react. This needs to change.

The bottom line is that large enterprises need to adapt quickly, Google are good at doing that.


Perhaps Research in Motion should be rebranded as Research in Slow Motion? Just a thought. 

Sorry RIM, you've had your day and were too slow to react and now suffering for it. Don't worry though your friends at Nokia are in the same boat as you.

Caio for now!

No comments:

Post a Comment