Why RIM is heading down the wrong path
As a faithful BB user for 8 years now, I'm staring to see some unfortunate parallels between the BB phone and other superior products that eventually failed. Although BB, IMHO, is a superior product it will not last because of RIM's reluctance to make serious gains in the consumer market.
Lets look back in history
1. Beta vs vhs - Beta was technologically better, vhs marketed better. vhs won
2. os2 warp vs windows 3.0 - os2 warp was a bulletproof 64 bit os far better than windows 3.0 (when did windows finally introduce a 64 bit os?). Windows won because IBM concentrated on the "enterprise" market and MS concentrated on getting their OS pre-installed on home PC's.
3. Lotus suite vs microsoft office - To this day people that worked in offices that had the lotus suite will swear by it. How many here have actually heard of lotus suite? It was faster, more powerful, easier to use and technologically better the MS office. Their downfall - concentrate on the "enterprise" market. Winner MS Office.
There are so many examples of superior products not making the right gains in the consumer market that inferior products eventually win out. This is whats happened to RIM. Despite this though some recent events have changed my outlook for RIM and why I'm predicting the BB10 release will be a huge disappointment.
1. RIM is still towing the party line on concentrating on the business market. Clearly a failing strategy considering that employees, if given a choice to trade in the BB and use their own phone will overwhelmingly use their non-BB phone (android or iOS). As for the PB, well all apple has to do is release a 7 inch iPad and kiss the PB goodbye. I know, the PB is superior. That's not the point. The inferior products are winning!
2. Did you see the ridiculous frenzy over the new iPad. Unbelievable. A new product with 2 new features that the general user doesn't care about and millions of copies sold in the first few days! It doesn't make sense. The new retina display only really matters if you are a graphics artist or extreme technophile and I just don't see many people wanting to get a separate $30-$40 a month data plan for the iPad when they probably have one on their phone - so the LTE was really useless as well.
Those lineups should have bee to purchase the discounted iPad2's, that's where the real deal was!
All this coupled with the disappointing earning call is making RIM look like the chrysler of the mobile industry. And as with chrysler, I think we'll see CEO after CEO and Owner after Owner trying to turn something around that missed its mark a few years ago.
BB10 will not turn RIM's fortune around. They are counting on this as the bandaid solution, which does not work as history tells us. RIM needs a new corporate strategy to develop a new product not the other way around.