by Jason Wilk on October 8, 2009
- T-Mobile and AT&T both currently plan on announcing the Bold 2 — also known as the Onyx — on October 21. Not impressed by the latest design, but ditching the track ball in favor of the new touch ball is a big plus for Blackberry fans. Before the new phone drops, RIM plans on releasing this gem below. An all white Blackberry Bold.
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by Jason Wilk on July 31, 2009
- Following last week’s Fortune Brainstorm event in Pasadena, CA, I got into an interesting 10 minute convo with a RIM executive. What were the topics of discussion? Apps, TelCo Reliability, iPhone and Hardware. This executive had the following to say: (this was not to be shared, but after numerous failed attempts to continue a conversation via email, I decided to post the main points of the convo. I will at least honor his anonymity).
- Apps: While RIM has been trying to find a way to stay competitive, he admitted that Blackberry App World has not been a rocket success in terms of app volume and developer popularity. “It’s tough when you are going up against a company operating one platform and perfecting a single piece of hardware”.
- TelCo Reliability: He said that RIM is fortunate to have so many solid relationships with the best TelCo’s globally. “It’s been a strong advantage in the market, especially the US, to offer devices across more than just one network”. When I asked him about AT&T, he said that it hasn’t been near the nightmare for them that Apple has seen with the iPhone/AT&T.
- iPhone: He said the iPhone is a great phonne, but he thinks Blackberry will continue to have strong growth. “They’re different phones”. He specifically pointed out the heavy adoption rates for 18-25 year olds this past year. “All of their friends are on BBM, and it’s addicting”. I couldn’t agree more with this statement. In Los Angeles, I am still heavily outnumbered in my group of friends and 95% of them say they will never give up their Blackberry because of all their friends on BBM (Blackberry Messenger).
- Hardware: This is where things got interesting. I asked him what RIM planned to do if the iPhone were to have upgraded their hardware to include a front-facing camera. His response was “as I said before, we are fortunate to have our relationships with many different carriers, some of which can handle something like live video-conferencing”. In other words, he and his team weren’t worried about the iPhone launching front-facing video-chat so long as they are with AT&T. The last thing he said to me was “video conferencing is something that could completely change the mobile landscape and it is something we have been thinking about and working on for quite some time. You will start seeing something early next year”.
by Jason Wilk on May 4, 2009
by Jason Wilk on March 17, 2009
- Research in Motion, maker of the popular Blackberry line of handsets, will apparently recruit an extra 3,000 staff in 2009. This will bring the total number of people on payroll to 15,000. With thousands of layoffs in the mobile industry including companies like Motorola in the last year, talent is plentiful and a good investment for a cash rich company like RIM (NASDAQ: RIMM).
- RIM is one of the few tech companies bullish on the down market right now, as they have already hired more than 7,000 new employees over the last 18 months. Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis says “this is the exact time to invest – if you can – because not only is there opportunity, but there are lots of resources out there.” If I were Lazardis, I would be putting my money in improving my design team. A major factor in the success of the iPhone is their design teams ability to understand the logisicts of how a phone can translate from paper to a solid user experience once it comes off the production line. In RIM’s case, the Blackberry Storm may have been a good idea conceptually, but when put into motion, was a giant failure. First on my agenda would be to fire whoever decided that when trying to attract third-party developers with a standardized platform, creating a touch screen phone that requires a user to ‘push’ the screen down would be a good idea.
by Jason Wilk on March 17, 2009
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