RIM's make-or-break Blackberry launch

QuintonB

QuintonB

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RIM’s big BlackBerry comeback

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion begins its comeback bid Wednesday with a new platform launch in a make-or-break move for a firm that is rapidly sinking in the smartphone market it once dominated.
 
The demand for Blackberry in this country seems to have no end but I still debate the issue of calling it a smart phone, as compared to a S3 / iPhone its really just a feature phone for the masses.
 
Wife just upgraded to 9900. First bb to do justice to the brilliant package. Can't believe it took so long. Leaders should be whipped for messing up a good thing.
 
Pricing will be key. A Huwaei P1 currently does circles around anything BB has to offer and is have the price of the best on offer at the moment from BB.
 
akescpt said:
Wife just upgraded to 9900. First bb to do justice to the brilliant package. Can't believe it took so long. Leaders should be whipped for messing up a good thing.
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Yep and the 9900 has been out for almost a year and a half, so these new BB10 models better be something special.
 
cbrunsdonza said:
The demand for Blackberry in this country seems to have no end but I still debate the issue of calling it a smart phone, as compared to a S3 / iPhone its really just a feature phone for the masses.
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I understand what you are saying with regards to the likes of the Curve's and such.

Then again at the opposite end of the market they can't really compete at all but I would still call them Smartphones.

Nobody else has anything in the bottom-end "Curve" segment which is where Blackberries rule the sales charts in South Africa. Closest thing I've seen is the HTC Wildfire which was really disappointing.
 
Sure. Its a comeback. The pundits (i.e. MyBB in this case with a title like that for your article) always seem to taut BlackBerry. Shares of BlackBerry rise on hope and not actual sales. The proof of the pudding is in the eating - that what I say.

It will depend on whether:
- There are still enough BlackBerry enthusiastic consumers (not writers/journalists), which I am seriously doubting right now and
- Whether BB devices are actually compelling.

Unfortunately, in my opinion BlackBerry seems short on both.

However, I still feel there is a glimmer of hope for BlackBerry. People do not buy what they don't know. In SA people buy BlackBerry because they know it and it has BIS. Without BIS, BlackBerry will remain with the fact that they are known. And with this fact (the fact that they are an established brand in people's minds - esp. in SA) there is hope for BB because only 1/5 of all mobile phone users are actually using smartphones right now. There is still room for growth for smartphones so BlackBerry as an established OEM has a very good chance of succeeding with BB10.

Market share however, will not grow significantly to levels of its glory days because without BIS, people will not be drawn to it as much. Also, there is really nothing outstanding or compelling that I see in BB10 devices or the BB10 OS; "peak" - is that it?

Unlike Windows, iOS and Android, BB doesn't have an established device ecosystem (or even apps) to which a halo effect can work for them. Android has tablets that are quite popular, Windows Phone has, well, Windows and iOS has OSX and Macs.

It is going to be hard for BB but it will stay in the game. 10% market share by 2016, compared to 40% (Android), 30% (iOS) and 20% (WP).
 
It doesn’t mean a lot having the new BB10 with the potential to make a big comeback when the SA BIS cannot handle the volume.
 
I think… a key part of why this launch could be very successful is because this will hit at the heart of many Nokia fans. The still-born N9, if you remember it, used the swipe-driven Meego operating system designed in conjunction with Intel to offer something remarkably different to anything else on the market. True to form, there is nothing else that looks and handles like Meego. But with the partnership with Microsoft, Nokia threw that opportunity away and Meego now lives on supported in a side-project run by the community.

Two OSes now carry the look and feel of Meego forward, as well as the various ideas it punted as to how phones should be used. That is BB 10 (now that I’ve seen it in action) and Mozilla’s Firefox OS. Both behave very much like Meego and I expect more parallels to be drawn between them once people get to explore the OS more. We’ve now got four distinct modern UI designs (not counting the many Android UI skins made by other manufacturers): Windows Phone with Live Tiles, Apple iOS with a virtual button-based and icon-orientated UI, Android with many similarities to iOS but with its own special effects and finally BB 10, with something that looks a lot like Meego. The future is going to be very interesting.

There was also no mention from Heins about how BIS and BES will change and I expect that’s going to be left to the various cellular operators to decide how they’re going to deal with the loss of flat-rated data. I’m hoping that BlackBerry (previously RIM, must remember that) will subsidise some of the data costs to allow bundles to be added for “free” to contracts, like in 250MB or 500MB sizes. We’ve heard before, from Vodacom itself, that the majority of their users don’t consume more than 150MB for browser activities. I’m hoping that the changes to BIS leave both e-mail, social networking and BBM as unlimited as possible. After all, that’s the whole reason why the BlackBerry brand exploded in South Africa – the pricing of data is exorbitant.
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My take on the whole thing.
 
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