Blackberry for the longest time was THE smartphone brand to go for in the mid to late 2000's. Having used and owned a couple of their devices I am very keen to what they have done, and are doing now to own the smartphone market. Love'em or hate'em Blackberry is still very relevant, but huge changes are about to take place. With Blackberry's share of the phone world falling off a cliff the last year, there is still reason to have hope. Read on to get a layout of what to expect from the Canadian icon...
Above you see an early model of what RIM (the company who makes Blackberry) was churning out of the factory. Rappers like Jay-Z threw out the word "blueberry" to describe their Blackberry because of this little guy. For all who think Jay-Z is too amazing to make the mistake, go listen to the song Encore when he says "out the country with the blueberry still connect". Yeah, not the lyricist everyone makes him out to be. Going back to Blackberry, they owned the smartphone market. In 2008, when the Pearl and Curve hit the market, RIM was able to push smartphones to all consumers and not just business professionals. They owned 43% of the smartphone market, and stock prices were up around $150. So what went wrong?
In April 2007 Apple introduces the iPhone and in January 2009 Android is introduced. The touchscreen world hit RIM like a ton of bricks. Trying to hold off the Apple surge RIM released the Storm on Verizon exclusively. This was a chance for both RIM and Verizon to take control of the market. As many of you may know though despite very nice sales, reliability issues stained RIM's reputation and the new touchscreen style SureType (a clickable touchscreen) did not make quite the impact it needed. Verizon decides to turn to Android for a second chance at an iPhone killer. So in the holidays of 2009 Droid becomes the spark Verizon was looking for, and RIM is now the bastard son of Verizon.
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| global smartphone market share mid-2011 |
In 2010 RIM still tried to pump out some devices continuing the same old Curve, Storm (Torch), and Bold series with a new optical trackpad instead of the trackball we all loved so much on earlier devices. All of a sudden at the end of 2010 Blackberry starts losing a little market share and starts to panic. Windows Phone hits market, Palm is about to die, and Android is gobbling up whatever market Apple hasn't covered yet. So RIM goes crazy and starts buying software companies to makes it's browser and UI better. And finally, RIM acquires what they think will be the Holy Grail of UIs...QNX.
QNX is another Canadian company that will bring RIM a smaller and different type of OS that will keep up with Android because they now plan to run Android apps on top of it.
So in 2010 QNX is adopted to usher in a new OS that will recapture the hearts and minds of old RIM users that left for other platforms. So in 2011 Blackberry releases the Playbook. I can only describe this as a turd covered with a nice aluminum chassis. Although the hardware is very nice, in fact nice enough that Amazon built the new Kindle Fire on it. Hardware is not all of a device these days though. RIM put the most half baked OS ever to be seen on a device. The things consumers identify as Blackberry is BBM (RIM's homemade messenger) and secured e-mail. Guess what the Playbook did not have? That's right kids, neither. They touted a great Flash enabled browser and the ability for HD content playback done extremely smooth. In addition they practically stole a multitasking design made by Palm showing you all your running programs at once in a card type design. This is nothing new, but QNX allowed all the cards to play simultaneously. Much like a PC you can see multiple programs processing at the same time never before seen on a mobile device. Check out the video below to get a taste of what QNX is doing to Blackberries.
So obviously this was more of an ad than an instructional video, but you could see what it could do. it looked nice, and honestly getting my hands and actually using one of these was a dream. I would have liked a little more screen real estate, but not a deal breaker. What makes me stick with my Touchpad instead of the Playbook is RIM's slow march to making the OS finished. About a half year after launch we are just seeing what the email client will be, and BBM is still nowhere to be found. To top it off RIM's secured BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server) is rumored to not be able to work on the Playbook. This is very bad if RIM can't get it to work right. BES is what secured organizations, like our government, use to give the president a secured smartphone. There is a reason the DoD hasn't outfitted Obama with an iPhone or Droid. An isolated server dedicated to RIM's services is a paranoid government employee's dream. Without these two things BES and BBM, RIM will most surely lose a lot of Blackberry loyalists.
So what is RIM's plan for the future? QNX will be deployed on both tablets and smartphones in the future. BES is still unclear, and honestly I think BBM will be eliminated. Soon Blackberry will release a new edition of the QNX OS that will include Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, E-mail, and text all together in a universal inbox. This is the alternative that I actually really like. I know a lot of people will be pissed to see BBM go away, but one unified messaging app is a better way to communicate. It's just quicker and easier for the OS to handle on the device. So now that we have a grasp of what they are doing on software, let's talk hardware.
So Blackberry just released a new version of the Curve, Bold, and Torch on all the major carriers around the world. Did you notice? I would bet not. These devices are also running a mock of the old software with some transitional pieces to the new QNX phones due out at the end of 2012. Did I just say the end of 2012? Wow! Still makes me dizzy to think we won't see the next generation of Blackberry until the holiday season. To hold us over though look at the pretty Porsche phone above.
Right now RIM's stock and employees are falling off a cliff. Thousands of employees were laid off last summer, their co-CEOs stepped down, and two of their employees just got booted off a plane going to China because they were drunk and stupid. Do you think RIM can stay alive long enough to see QNX save the day? Ask their new CEO Thorsten Heins. Thorsten, which is pronounced like tersten, is a German who used to run the technology division at Siemens. Seems natural RIM would appoint a Siemen's executive. They originated together back in the 90's building cell radios and making email/SMS paging a reality on your hip. During Thorsten's reign the cellphone division died and Siemens got into energy and networking technologies instead. So 4 years after being acquired by RIM, he lands the hardest job in Canada right now. Good luck!
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| Is this what Hitler would have wanted? |
Listening to Mr Heins on various media outlets he seems optimistic about the changes occurring at RIM, and felt old leadership needed to go to make the company fresh again. Right now the public needs to see something new from RIM, but we will have to make do with what we have now for another 10 months. So when will Mr Heins unveil the new generation and hurt sales of the current generation? My guess is August after RIM stock hits $9. By that time the iPhone 5, the Droid 4, and the Nokia Lumia will be dominating the market. Expect Amazon or Facebook to scoop up RIM, gut it, and make something even worse out of it.
