Some thoughts on Blackberry.

Over the last week, RIM's stock price fell 27.7%, from an opening of $18.00 on Monday, and closing at $13.01 on Friday.  About half of the drop occurred on the day RIM formally introduced its BB10 devices.

Not exactly encouraging, but if you look at the longer trend since October of last year, it's clear that there was a run-up prior to BB10's formal introduction.  I think this was mostly profit-taking.

I suppose if RIM had showed off BB10 devices that wowed the crowd, their stock price wouldn't have dropped all that much on Wednesday.

Or it could be, that when CEO Thorsten Heins said that the US wouldn't be getting the new devices until March, people realized that RIM's market share would only continue to decline.  It was a curious move, considering that RIM's decline could be traced to its decline in the US, and not the other way around.

That is to say, RIM's strategic move is to reinforce its strongest markets, and hope for the best in its weakest, but most important market.

But what about their devices?

Well, I think a physical keyboard is dead, and trying to push a keyboard model -- one that reduces the size of the screen as a result -- is a poor attempt to placate its fans.  The two most popular smart phones, the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy S-III, do not have keyboards.  A quick glance at the different carriers, shows that slide-out / physical keyboards are not that popular.  If you have a decent software keyboard that allows you to swipe to type, you'll find it much easier than using a physical keyboard.

The UI closely resembles parts of Android and iOS, and in some cases, parts of the old Palm WebOS.  That is, there are rows of icons and swiping from the edges can bring about different options -- as opposed to the Windows Phone UI paradigm.  This could help it along quite a bit.  As noted by many, BB10 coming out of the starting gates, is already behind Android and iOS in terms of features, and seeing how long it took for RIM to bring out BB10, having a solid UI is not enough.

Another problem: too few devices.  It's the same problem I cited, months before Palm released its Pre phone.  This can be solved, in part, by the oft talked about possibility of RIM licensing its OS to others, and if they want to survive, this is undoubtedly the way to go.  So why haven't they done so already? Again, missteps and slow action.

One last hurdle: RIM service fees.  RIM and its investors are addicted to the fees that RIM earns from its required service fees using their products, so much so that when Heins suggested that there might be tiered service fees last December, the stock tanked almost as much as it has this past week.  The truth is, this is a BYOD world, and those service fees make no sense in an ultra-competitive smart phone market.

In conclusion, I think RIM has set itself up to regain market share with a smart UI, but it has also complicated its future by a series of bad decisions and by not moving fast enough to keep up.  I previously criticized Microsoft for not moving faster than the competition; the same holds true for RIM.  If you're coming from the rear of the pack, you cannot move at the same speed of your competitors; you have to move faster.

Just as Microsoft seems to have settled on WP8 as some sort of monumental point in the development of Windows Phone, so has RIM set up BB10 as a significant event.  It is not.  Development does not stop just because you've reached a milestone.  It's as if both companies continue to follow the old paradigm, and that's good news....for Apple and Google.