Monday, January 10, 2011

Dear BlackBerry, thank you for being awesome.

      So many people know my hatred for Apple iPhone. I hate the OS, and I hate the traction it gained in the market so soon. It became "The Dumbphone" to own, because almost no one uses this phone as a smartphone, they just see it as a cool and trendy phone. I've been upset at the lack of BlackBerry answers to the iPhone, the Storm was decent at best, and until the Torch 9800 came out, we BlackBerry fans had nothing to really compare the iPhone to.

     But then numbers came out today from CES (the Computer Electronics Show) thats reminded me of something. BlackBerry has 40% of the market share in smartphones. Android has 15% and Apple has 23%. These numbers make me happy to some extent, it reminds me that people still buy BlackBerry almost twice as often as they buy an iPhone. However, RIM is actually down from 44% last year, meaning we're still seeing a net-down for them.


    So what is it going to take for the biggest selling smart-phone company to work on retaining their market? A few things need to be done - 
  • Recapture your key audience. And make sure they stay happy. BlackBerry has always been the          phone of the professional businessman. Someone who needs a real keyboard and an "always on" connection to his company.
  • New Operating System. OS6 is very nice, but really, it needs to be on everyones BlackBerry, not just certain carriers. I should'nt have to 'hack' my 6 month old Bold2 to run the latest software. Its not user friendly.
  • Appstore. Yea, you have App World, but it sucks. Give your developers a REASON to design a good program for you. Pay them 20 dollars or something for any quality submissions, just to kickstart it.
  • Finally, STOP letting your carriers Bash your phones. Rogers, Bell, Fido, they ALL push iPhone. If I log into my Rogers account, I get a message asking me to upgrade my BlackBerry to an iPhone. Seriously, stop that crap now. Every time I pull my Nissan into the garage for an oil change, I dont want my mechanic asking me if I want to trade into a Toyota. Its just bad for business.
If you can get all these things running, you'll have no problem getting new people coming back home to the phones they've loved for years.

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