Friday, July 6, 2012

Why RIM IS in a death spiral.

RIM's CEO, Thorsten Heins is attempting to run a PR show.  It's not going to work.

Pushing their timeline for BB10 to next year means that RIM will miss out on the crucial holiday sales season. Last year we saw the big bump that both Android and iPhone received, and history is ready to nearly repeat itself with a new iPhone 5 and new Androids running Jelly Bean.  Oh, and there's the new Windows Phone 8 that Microsoft is trying to target enterprise with.

Even if every existing Blackberry owner resists temptation and holds on for BB10, they're still stuck in neutral, neither gaining or losing customers.  But the problem is, the smartphone market is still growing.  All that growth will be eaten up by people buying iPhones, Androids and to a lesser extent, WP.  By virtue of the continued migration to smartphones, RIM is going to see its market share plummet.

And when RIM does come out with BB10, how many devices will it have available?  One?  Two?  From where I'm standing, it sure looks like RIM is simply following the same path that was blazed by Palm with WebOS, which has been curiously followed by Nokia.

So what if QNX is the basis of many embedded systems -- it means nothing to the customer trying to figure out which phone to buy as a present for Christmas.

No comments: