Putting aside the fact that RIM (Research in Motion) is an awful name for a high tech firm, resulting in stifled giggles everywhere, the makers of the BlackBerry have some issues. Specifically, they’re in very real danger of being the next MySpace – a seemingly unassailable presence in tech, an arbiter of coolness and sophistication – that’s about to disappear in a puff of smoke, thanks to some blatantly superior competition. The announcement today of a new operating system, and the promise of an interesting but hardly groundbreaking new device, will not get the stench of failure off them.
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The BlackBerry phenomenon never hit Australia in the same way that it did in the states. BlackBerry phones were miles ahead of the competition in the first half of the last decade. For the record, the competition was Nokia’s Communicator series, some HTC Windows Mobile handsets and Palm, with a few offerings from Sony Ericsson that never quite got there. Early smartphones were a crowded market, where nothing worked well exactly, but the functionality was so fantastic compared to what came before that it was must-have for any serious enterprise user.
The BlackBerry was just a cut above the rest. With a responsive, well designed full QWERTY keyboard, a secure messaging service that made number-pad based typing look like stone age technology, and the ability to read Office documents, the BlackBerry was a breath of fesh air. And it was addictive. Not for nothing was it called the CrackBerry – the intuitive messaging system made the BlackBerry a constant companion in the hand of executives, celebrities and other busy types. It’s size was an accidental bonus too –it bucked the trend of ever shrinking phones, and being too big to fit in some pockets, it became a handheld device – and that exposure helped.
But that same market segment tends to be unsentimental. When the iPhone came out in 2007, RIM scoffed it away, unaware that its key customers were interested. Why would anyone want something clearly better, when we have these nifty hardware keys? RIM stuck to its high-powered market, who went “meh” and started leaving in droves. RIM now owns about 6% of worldwide smartphone market share, and sales would suggest that these are from fleet deployments to office workers who would just as readily have their own iPhone.
A series of blunders, from the introduction of the misguided PlayBook tablet to some scandals over bad executive behavior on flights and in hotels, have further made RIM look like a dysfunctional mob on the brink of exploding. Ousting the longtime CEO team (who has two CEOs?) was a good start, but replacing him with an inscrutable European cipher with a prim haircut and a name that evokes Thirsty Hens was unhelpful. If anything, it further cemented the idea that RIM is just another venerable old American company that long ago ditched R&D for Finance – even if it is, in fact, a Canadian firm.
BlackBerry OS10
Back to the subject at hand – today’s announcements in a nutshell:
1. BlackBerry will be focusing on ‘hyperconnected BlackBerry people”, which immediately includes no-one and everyone. But they like apps, which is hardly RIM’s strong suit.
2. BlackBerry will become more fun.
3. RIM will be engaging with more app developers, but mostly in the enterprise space, with companies like Salesforce.com (who provide software for small businesses to manage their customer base). But one has to assume Salesforce will be developing for iOS and Android as well.
4. A bunch of developers will be getting an Alpha Development Device. Put more simply, a test phone. It’s an iPhone, but with corners like a PlayBook. That’s not a bad thing – the PlayBook is actually pretty good on the outside. Here’s a pic:
5. The new operating system will have some neat tricks. You can activate the camera at any screen, and it will take a burst of images – you can then pick the one that suits best. Meh.
6. There’s some clever multitasking, but it’s still a half-baked solutions compared to, say, a Windows desktop.
7. They’re gonna run BBOS 10 in some cars.
What to make of this? BlackBerry phones will eventually look a lot like Android and Apple phones of today. But even then, there’s no BlackBerry model right now to take advantage of the admittedly decent steps taken in OS 10.
Even then, the Dev phone looks pretty cool – I’d certainly be more interested in that phone, with what looks to be a rubberized back and a solid build quality. The operating system looks better than Android, but not by much, and looks about as pretty as iOS and Windows Phone. But that’s not where the competition is right now- it’s in apps, baby! RIM still sounds unsure about what it wants – sure it’s fun and cool, but it’s also SPECIFICALLY GREAT FOR BUSINESS PEOPLE.
Conclusion
RIM is in a tricky position. It has defiantly said it will not be another Android phone maker, and more power to them. We have too many of those anyway. But it’s also trying hard to be Apple, releasing exclusive hardware on exclusive devices. In this, however, it is making the classic mistake of salesmanship – it is focusing on the feature, and not the benefit.
Today’s presentation was gussied up to look like an Apple event. Thorsten Heins used similar language to an Apple keynote speaker, including the awkward “let us to be rock and roll thees!” at the end. There were the slick commercials showing happy, pretty BlackBerry users enjoying their hectic lives with the help of RIM’s seamless technology.
But the magic ingredient of an Apple keynote is the reveal. Here it is! Available today! Prototypes?!? We keep those in the lab. That’s for us to know. This is for you to buy. Thanks for coming.
So who was the audience for today’s keynote? Developers, mostly. And they want to develop for any phone that’s on sale and ready to make money. Which a new BlackBerry very much is not. So who else was interested in today’s song and dance?
I’d wager some of this was for shareholders – a quick “hey guys! Everything is fine. We’re still innovating. Look how confident we are!” but where’s the damn product? This looked a lot like a beg for money, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s all it was – a presentation to boost the share price. And that’s very sad.
It’s true that you have to avoid selling the steak, and concentrate on selling the sizzle. But you have to ship the steak, and it’s clear RIM have no such steak to ship right now. Their next showcase should probably come with a table full of devices for sale right now, if they want to avoid becoming dead meat.