All eyes on Rim ( Now Blackberry)

it looks nice, definitely a contender on appearance… but another software ecosystem?

I love pulling for the underdogs and not letting just a few mobile companies dominate, but app quality & availability is my biggest problem with WindowsPhone. It comes up all the time, from software for my bank (Android and iPhone only) to apps like Paper & Vine. Developers don’t want to invest the money and effort into it

If anything cripples WP, it’s this, and I can’t see how another mobile OS is going to get around it

Cool I can get my Iphone now branded as a BlackBerry.
This is so 201o.

What you see here is what I call “The VW Golf Effect”. Apple nailed the concept of the smartphone like
VW nailed the concept of the modern compact car. Both products hit the bullseye of the market and now
sit square in the middle of it. Both bringing a new design language to the market that broadens their appeal.

Thus the competitors feel forced to emulate the successful market champion instead of developing their
own strengths. While this might be reasonable concerning the product architecture (back bones) it doesn’t
help to copy the look aswell.

What RIM does here is what Chrysler Europe did with the Horizon. They had a strong contender in the market
before the Golf with the Simca 1200, which was strong on comfort, space and “durability” and already had the
hatchback in 1967. They didn’t follow it up with a developed variant of itself. Instead they built a small car, that just
looked like a Golf but had a softer ride and plusher seats. At the beginning they tried to sell it at a premium, but
over time had to sell it at a discount against the market leader.

The only thing VW had to do was to produce some holiday season specials with crushed velour seats
and a free radio…

The only thing Apple would have to do to crush RIM would be to built an “iOS-business” that allows for two
emulated machines to run on the same hardware. Won’t be worth their hassle.

Chrysler Europe even changed their name, too. The later cars were called “Talbot Horizon”, but it didn’t save
their bread, either. In 1985 they were gone.

What RIM should do is build a real “Black. Berry.”

The architecture and hardware could all stay the same, but for heavens sake wrap it into something cool, that
says “company director” more than a Porsche Convertible on a friday afternoon.

Look into high end materials for the hardware and reduce the look of the software to the max. Some BW Metropolis
theme with large icons, that company directors can decifer without their glasses would be great. Put that into an
artificial “Obsidian” with silver ridges, that looks like its done by Syd Mead AND Loewy.

But don’t just do another iClone.

mo-i

I do feel partial to Black Berry being that I still have one as of right now. I want this phone to be a hit but like you said Mi-o they are mimicking what the market already has.
Blackberry has an image problem just like Internet Explorer they need to hit the business market hard and let the goodwill trickle down. I feel a lot of consumers love to have business ready phones even if they do no such things because of the image that comes along with it. “Hey look at me I get stuff done” That’s what Blackberry needs to get back.

The issue is cultural relevance, product wise. It has never been a stunning product. The original looked like a calculator. The original was a hit because there were literally no viable competitors at the time. It served a functional purpose. As soon as there were competitors that could do some of the same things (connect to secure exchange servers), it was a battle. They were skipped over, and now they are catching up (5 years later) rather than trying to skip over the competition.

Excellent association with Internet Explorer and Blackberry.

That’s exactly how I feel about BB…

I had a BlackBerry once, it was a pain to use the touchtone keypad when calling automated services or dialing numbers I had memorized as spelled words. :angry:

A little OT, but still blackberry:

A decade ago, before I was a designer, I listened to a news story of a man who had the tips of his finger bones whittled down so he could use his blackberry better…Touch screens have their drawbacks, but that is the most excruciating compensatory behavior based on bad design I have ever heard of.

I actually despise that so much ha

Future Is Bleak For BlackBerry

Shares plunge 27.8 percent. :frowning:

the tablet had been designed by their accessories division - I wonder why?

How much do you blame Alicia Keys for Blackberry’s turnaround woes?

It’s all Alicia Keys fault. Her career is over.

obvi. :wink:

A few lessons learned from Blackberry and many others before them:

1 - The longer you exist and people know you’re irrelevant, the harder it is to become relevant again
2 - The longer you’ve been irrelevant or decining in relevance, the more bold risks you need to take with your product offering in order to have a chance at reestablishing your relevance (EG Apple circa iMac 1, Nokia circa Holiday 2011 with the introduction of the Lumia 800, Microsoft with Metro, etc).
3 - Coasting and ‘safe’ ie bland design is riskier than bold, relevant design that strongly appeals to a target user group (not saying it has to be too trendy, but it has to be bold).

Cameron: They called a product “Bold”, doesn’t that count?

I think Alicia has been busy with other things:

Those sneaker heels just look so awkward. Not a fan.

Hah, I hear you on the sneaker heels. I’ve seen acceptable one’s but the graphics on these really don’t work with the shape. But anyway, that would be a whole different thread. :wink:

They are such an oxymoron to me^

I like the shoes more than the blackberry. =)