It’s a tragic tale, though. For the first decade of this century, RIM had the world in its hands because of the revolutionary Blackberry. These phones were historic. They were a huge asset for businesses and they explored the multitude of boundaries telecommunications could offer. They were one of the first phones I can recall to have a cool factor.
I don’t have the numbers to back me up, but I don’t need them. I can clearly remember, as I’m sure most of you can too, the times when everyone couldn’t live without their blackberries. It was a priviledge to know someone’s BBM ID and feel as if you were on a different level communicating with them via this platform rather than texting. Just as it was a priviledge to have all you could possibly need in your palm: phone, texting, BBM, email, web browsing, and more. Not to mention the comfort of a full keyboard, which I know so many still prefer over touch screens.
For the time being, pre widespread fawning of the iPhone, it was bliss for RIM. Then they had to go and fail over and over again.
Sure, the iPhone was always going to win, but for a short time, I remember when the question of iPhone or Blackberry came up, some would have fought to defend RIM’s pearl product. Now, however, the question of iPhone or Blackberry is a joke. A sad one too, because over the last few years, as all smartphones continued to innovate, RIM, to me at least, no longer tried. I can’t remember any recent attempt by them to do something drastic and get their customers excited.
Maybe they were hoping businesses would never give up on them, which might be true to some extent, given the preference for blackberries amongst older generations. That doesn’t change how they’ve continued to fall, though. I can’t get forget the outage RIM experienced earlier this year. The one where anyone with a blackberry was completey shut down for multiple days. It was an embarrassment that RIM couldn’t recover from, yet again.
And now to this again: it was reported yesterday, as I saw on TechCrunch and Mashable, that the new CEO of RIM, Thornstein Heins, has said ” I don’t think that there is a drastic change needed.”
For a company that was once king, and let its throne slip into oblivion, you’ve got to be kidding me. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.
