BlackBerry and a Simpler Mobile Time
Two years ago BlackBerries dominated at Control Group. Back then, if you picked up one of the orange Nerf balls that dotted the CG office landscape and threw it, chances were that you would hit someone who kept a BlackBerry Curve in their pocket. I have fond memories of the original Curve with its beautiful screen and extremely tactile keyboard, as it was the last BlackBerry I ever carried.
As an early adopter, I made the jump from the Curve to the first Android device, the G1. This began a change in the office where everyone was looking for a way to get away from the BlackBerry and get on to something else, be it an Android, iPhone, or Windows Mobile. Within a year, iPhones and Androids were quickly becoming the norm. It got to a point where we had a New Year’s prediction that CG would be a BlackBerry free company by 2012– and it was almost correct. How close did we get?
From a company that was at a time 100% BlackBerry, we now have the following:
So what changed that caused such a radical shift? In short, the mobile landscape did, and what didn’t change was the Blackberry.
With a new emphasis on touchscreen devices that did more than just act as an email life vest, BlackBerry held fast to what made them the king. While they still focused on enterprise level email with Exchange servers, Apple and Google were providing media rich devices with more screen real estate and features than any BlackBerry had ever offered. As its competitors updated and perfected their devices, they took aim at the mighty BB… the iPhone with stronger Exchange functionality, and Android with it’s unique ability to sync seamlessly with Google Apps, as well as increased Exchange functionality.
A series of rushed products like the BB Storm and the BB App World just further showed that RIM didn’t get it. With a new line of hybrid touch devices still featuring the iconic keyboard, they’re still left with an OS that is tricky to code for at best, and has such a small market share that many developers don’t even bother writing apps for it.
RIM’s ace in the hole though, is the wildly successful BB Messenger. While it’s not enough to reel back the customers they have lost, it’s their bargaining chip with other mobile companies. Recent news suggests that RIM is being shopped around to their competitors, more specifically to Samsung. Fearing it is not long for this mobile world, they are trying to keep alive by licensing their software or by being bought out, either completely or by selling divisions.
It feels a bit premature to start writing a eulogy for the BlackBerry but it’s about that time to start notifying the family that this is likely Gramma BB’s last Thanksgiving. Even as a faithful Android user, I still reminisce about the old BlackBerry days when fast email and a good keyboard was all I needed. You could go 3 days without putting your BlackBerry on a charger, you didn’t have to worry about how much built in storage it had, and you didn’t have to worry about apps or games… it was a simpler device for a simpler time.
Nobody in the mobile industry has come close to the Blackberry keyboard, even after all these years. I could answer emails while crossing the street, typing entirely by touch. I didn’t need auto-correct. I got emails reliably, all the time and I never worried that someone wouldn’t get a reply.
Touch screens are nice for a lot of things, but churning through emails is not one of them. Over 50% of my mobile utilization is still email — every time I walk by a cell phone store, I still think about picking up a Blackberry as an email only device.
Albert C. Lee
25 Jan 12 at 11:07 am
Albert, I totally agree. I could walk down a busy NYC street while banging out an email without ever having to look down. One of our developers had started a little game in our office where everyone would try to blind type a given phrase and see what the results where. They weren’t nearly as bad as one would assume. Would probably be a lot more interesting now with all touch screen devices, though said developer is still rocking the worlds most beat up BB 8800.
Michael West
25 Jan 12 at 3:10 pm
Albert, I’m with you. At risk of a public beating, I claimed at the 2012 all-staff meeting this month that the Blackberry would make a comeback simply because of it’s reliability, snappiness and ease of use when in comes to email and the physical keyboard. I literally heard someone yell out “that’s blasphemy” because of the android following that’s taken hold. I love the walled jungle of Android as well as walled garden of the iPhone (thanks Colin), but my email replies have dropped dramatically, and I’m wearing out the “excuse my brevity” signature line. Blackberry is still the choice of super high end clients and the porsche is hot among celebs…there might be hope…whoever buys RIM or whatever RIM’s next step is, I dream that they can put a product forward that gives me what android offers while delivering the snappy tool that made BB famous. I would toss my Nexus S in a second.
Campbell Hyers
26 Jan 12 at 8:02 pm