As we near 2012, I think back through all of 2011. It seems Rim was hit on all sides all year. Stock prices dropping dramatically, Playbook sales no where near Apples Ipad sales. ETC ETC. Now we are hearing about Indonesia wanting to rid itself of the Blackberry services. Indonesia is a huge market for Rim, losing it could cause a lot of damage to Rim.
All this brings me to the question, Will Rim be around as we know it in 2013?
Well for starters, we hear all the bad and the ugly that Rim is going through, what about the good? What about the possibility of it being purposely under attack by larger companies who would love to buy out Rim?
I believe that if you are an investor, you may want to be careful with investing in Rim. On the other hand I also believe that Rim will recover, or even if it is bought out, the Blackberry as we know it will not quiet cease to exist.
As far as the company goes, it is doing bad at the moment, but I want to talk about the devices themselves, seeing as how I am a tech junkie. I firmly believe that although the company as a whole is not doing great this year, and things look bleak, that people actually love their Berry's. I personally have used every device from Apple, to Samsung, etc. I always revert to my Blackberry. And I will tell you why.
The iPhone is a solid device. Apple has the o/s down pat. It just works. Android struggles because there is much too many devices using android so you can't give android in general a good rating. But, when it comes down to what you do MOST on your device every day you can not beat the Blackberry. At lease for me, I feel slowed down when I use anything else. Below I will list the features I love about Blackberry. As primitive and outdated as some Apple fans and Android fans might think it is I believe it is still a viable, relevent device.
Here is simply 3 things I can not live without on my smartphone.
The Physical Qwerty Keypad:
I do not care what anyone says about how great a touchscreen is, nothing beats my tactile full qwerty keypad on my 9900 Bold. It is amazing, I can type without looking at lightning speeds. No matter how fast you get on a touch screen phone, you just can't type without looking. I don't think that we will be steering away completely from this form of input for at least a few years yet. And Blackberry has the leading design on full qwerty keypad phones.
The Email Service, Push Email:
I love the efficiency and ease of use on all Blacberry devices Email service. I have 5 email addresses on my device, All of them work great and fast, and easy. To set it up, all I do is put in my email address and password. And that is it! No further set up or tweaking required. I get an email I hear a ding or whatever noise I assign to it. I do not get error messages, I do not get mail missed, I don't have to refresh or re sync, etc etc etc!. Trust me I have had nightmares using other devices email services. Don't get me started on androids.
Battery Life:
Now, this I have tested first hand. The battery life on Blackberry's stomps that of other smartphones. Including, iPhone, Samsung galaxy series, HTC desire and up. Sony ARC Series. I have owned them all. And I have to charge all of them during the day or at very best every single night.
I have owned, Blackberry torch, Storms, Bolds, Curves, and Pearls. And guess what. They all did 2 or 3 days for me sometimes, without having to turn off every feature on it. Enough said, the battery life is something really important when you are depending on your device to work when you need it to.
Based on these three things, which I believe are the CORE of features a Blackberry offers, not to mention the security, I believe Rim or at least the Blackberry as we know it, is NOT going away soon. The security however may soon be available on other devices.
Feel free to comment below!, Thanks for reading.
Hi Isaac:
ReplyDeleteI saw your 9360 disassembly video on You Tube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gukwOCWSvI
(At least, I assume it was you; the link led me to this blog.)
Anyway, I was hoping you'd have made a note of some of the chips used in this phone. In particular, I'm wondering which TI chip they used for Wi-Fi.
If you have this info for the 9360 or any other RIM phones, can you get in touch with me? I'm jeffr42 at gmail dot com
Thanks a lot,
Jeff
Hello, Unfortunatly I didn't actually take note of the chips in the phone. I actually do not go as far as repairing or replacing chips. So I never go that far. Only soldering I do would be charger ports and simple things like that.
DeletePS. To answer your questions in the original post, I think RIM is in trouble on a number of fronts. First, on the technical side, they're really fumbling the transition to QNX. BB7 was a total dead end for customers as well as developers. They need to provide a clear roadmap for developers for QNX, and stick to it. Speaking as a former s/w dev, OS migrations are never easy, but they've got to make it work or they're sunk.
ReplyDeleteBesides the OS question, their phones generally seem a little behind the curve these days. Part of that is perception, and the latest refreshes have been OK from a h/w perspective, but they're certainly not leading the pack, and they're working to recover from a lot of bad decisions in terms of how they were addressing the consumer market.
They'd probably benefit from pruning their product line, as Jobs did to Mac when he returned as iCEO. There's just too many models today. Somehow iPhone is flourishing with only 4: 3GS, 4, CDMA 4, 4S. And I wouldn't be surprised if when 5 comes out they drop everything prior to 4S.
On the business side, they're suffering from a lot of bad press, which can quickly become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Cf. Nortel. RIM seems to be taking the role of the Canadian company every business writer loves to beat up.
No obvious recovery plan on that front, though. Just turfing B & L would satisfy the haters, but who's going to lead them? Don't look for them to get bought: Microsoft has gotten into bed with Nokia, and there's no other obvious buyer.
That said, they have a strong balance sheet, and good market share in some emerging markets. They won't go out of business tomorrow, but they're not going to be the prestige brand in the West that they once were.
My guess: Driven by investors, the company will be split into the server business (which will succeed by providing enterprise email infrastructure supporting iOS, Android and Windows) and a handset business (which will fail, with talented designers being picked up by Nokia and the Android makers.)
IMHO. YMMV. Use only as directed. Free advice (and opinions) are worth what you paid for them.
You seem very knowledgeable and I apreciate the response. It all makes sense what you say and I feel afraid of what may happen to rim.
ReplyDeleteI live in an area where the main phone being used is blackberry's. Around here blackberrys are doing great. So thats why I think that on the front lines, at the consumer level, the b;ackberry would be doing great. I don't know what it is but I sense blackberry is under atack by the media and by some other companies. Because honestly the majority of actual consumers are not upset with the way blackberry's are.
I think for business use it still is the mose efficient device. But yes that is my opinion. I don't have facts to back it up, just experience in the field and I know what I see.
So I have my hopes in blackberry remaining as a hardware and Services company.