[Sudden_Berry]

As many people on the forum have noted, many people turn away from BlackBerry phones simply because they are blackberries.

BlackBerry could change their corporate and product names. Then, they could launch an advertising campaign that makes them seem like a new company with a "refreshingly different" product.

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[ProjectBrett]

no.

[GenghisKahn2011]

The "rebranded" company and products will forever be referenced as successor to BlackBerry.

Sears was once the world's largest retailer. K-Mart just barely leaves Chapter 11 bankruptcy but ends up with controlling interest in Sears. Instead of strengthening K-Mart, Sears may be on its last legs joining the likes of Montgomery Wards.

BlackBerry Q10 driven by 10.3.2.2339 on T-Mobile

[daniel337]

Bull****

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[wilber1]

R I M did it for me .

[Sudden_Berry]

By contrast, Apple rebranded themselves and did very well (they rebranded their image, which was tarnished). BlackBerry needs to rebrand their name, as people dismiss their products without examining them.

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[howarmat]

They should try something like Research in Motion....has a good ring to it

[Jakob Greve]

They should try something like Research in Motion....has a good ring to it

Maybe research in slow motion

[co4nd]

So deceive people into buying blackberry products by calling them something else,

Nice, perhaps you should consider a career in politics.

And when did Apple exactly rebrand them selves? I know they dropped the "Computer" from their name, but they pretty much stuck to their image and made new products (OS X, iMac, iPod, iPhone) that people wanted.

[calicocat2010]

Didn't Apple change their logo?

[Prem WatsApp]

Didn't Apple change their logo?

The rainbow left them... :-(

(Anyway, the original copyright for that one and the apple goes to the author of Genesis, who arguably is God ...)

�   "BB Android Armageddon: Chenisys is uploading in 5,4,3..."   �

[LostOnThePianoRoll]

I agree with that logic, the company should have stayed as RIM. Just like they launched "the BlackBerry" more than a decade ago. BlackBerry 10 as we know it should have been a completely new chain under the RIM name. While continuing with the BlackBerry chain using BlackBerry OS 7 and up.

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[Troy Tiscareno]

Apple slightly changed their name (from Apple Computer, Inc. to just Apple, Inc.) and their logo (from the original rainbow Apple to the solid Apple), but those are both minor evolution of the type that most companies go through if they last more then 20 years. Look at how many times Coke and Pepsi have updated their logos - while retaining the original spirit of the design - over the years.

BB's problem is their brand image, which isn't the logo, or even the name, but rather (potential) customers' views of what the company and its products stand for. BB has spent a decade letting its brand image decline, and that's not going to be easy to overcome. The problems Apple faced in the mid-90s wasn't nearly as severe - the Apple brand image wasn't nearly as badly damaged, though the product-line was uninspired and overpriced. Apple also had the huge advantage of having their visionary founder come back and make huge changes (including killing most existing products) and come up with some innovative, catchy, consumer products that were brilliantly marketed. BB doesn't have such a visionary founder/leader (people at the level of Steve Jobs aren't exactly in great supply in the world) and it has more-or-less abandoned the high-growth, high-potential consumer market to focus on a niche that better fits its product lines. And that would be fine for BB's other lines of business (QNX, BBM, BES), but smartphones are a consumer-first product, even if they didn't start that way in the early 90's. That's why Apple is being so successful in the enterprise.

Yes, IMO, it was extremely foolish and myopic of BB to rename itself from RIM to the name of a failing, damaged product brand. Yes, the BB brand name had had power and cachet in the market in the early 2000s, but by the time RIM changed its name to BB in 2013, the BB brand name was heavily damaged, and it seems like the only people who didn't know that worked in the Waterloo echo chamber.

Plus, a new (non-BB-related) name for BB10 would have sent a message that this new product line was different and separate from the BBs that people had once loved but had grown to hate. It would have been instant shorthand to tell the world "these phones are all new!" BB management, of course, went the opposite way and wrapped itself in its damaged, hated brand name, and that alone has greatly hurt the adoption of many products - BBM and BES, as well as BB10, are all too strongly associated with BBOS to gain traction in the market, especially for people who own a different brand of smartphone but might have been interested in BBM or BES.

I don't think Chen would have made the same mistake, but Thor was a loyal member of Team Mike & Jim and had the same flawed, BB-can-do-no-wrong thinking that helped to kill (or, at least, severely wound) the company.

[Prem WatsApp]

I agree with that logic, the company should have stayed as RIM. Just like they launched "the BlackBerry" more than a decade ago. BlackBerry 10 as we know it should have been a completely new chain under the RIM name. While continuing with the BlackBerry chain using BlackBerry OS 7 and up.

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Kinda blame it on Heins. They were too enthusiastic about their new product. (New product, new era, new name?) Should have waited until real actual sales results were coming in...

The BB10 launch show could have been a bit more enthusiastic though, mmmhhh, I believe. :-D

�   "BB Android Armageddon: Chenisys is uploading in 5,4,3..."   �

[Cobrajett]

I agree with that logic, the company should have stayed as RIM. Just like they launched "the BlackBerry" more than a decade ago. BlackBerry 10 as we know it should have been a completely new chain under the RIM name. While continuing with the BlackBerry chain using BlackBerry OS 7 and up.

Posted via CB10

I tend to agree with this. And with the current direction the company is headed, software/enterprise/IOT, Research in Motion much more closely aligns with that strategy. Blackberry really should have remained a "product". I'm not a big believer that RIM (the name) was hurting the company much at all. All of the failures were blamed on BlackBerry. In fact, I used to know lots of BlackBerry users that had no idea what RIM was. IMO

[tkulthenoble]

I tend to agree with this. And with the current direction the company is headed, software/enterprise/IOT, Research in Motion much more closely aligns with that strategy. Blackberry really should have remained a "product". I'm not a big believer that RIM (the name) was hurting the company much at all. All of the failures were blamed on BlackBerry. In fact, I used to know lots of BlackBerry users that had no idea what RIM was. IMO

True in Nigeria here blackberry was huge and still big and I'm sure not lot know about RIM we all know about blackberry.

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[acovey]

NO, NO and NO

[jackfrost1209]

Never!!!

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[Bishkin]

Blackberry belongs to a bygone era and now it has nothing to show for, dead!. To move forward, a complete rebrand without ties to the past is necessary, no more RIM, no berries of any kind, no fruits. A complete new identity for a chance to be creative. Not to say this will succeed but without a name change success is very very close to zero.

[bakron1]

The one major hurtle here in the USA at least is that iOS and Android have been embedded into everyday culture here.

It's going to take something more then just changing a corporate name to get folks to come back to the brand again.

You are going to have to change the way folks think and how they use their devices in their daily lives and that is one huge hurtle to try and jump over!!

[neoberry99]

Apple slightly changed their name (from Apple Computer, Inc. to just Apple, Inc.) and their logo (from the original rainbow Apple to the solid Apple), but those are both minor evolution of the type that most companies go through if they last more then 20 years. Look at how many times Coke and Pepsi have updated their logos - while retaining the original spirit of the design - over the years.

BB's problem is their brand image, which isn't the logo, or even the name, but rather (potential) customers' views of what the company and its products stand for. BB has spent a decade letting its brand image decline, and that's not going to be easy to overcome. The problems Apple faced in the mid-90s wasn't nearly as severe - the Apple brand image wasn't nearly as badly damaged, though the product-line was uninspired and overpriced. Apple also had the huge advantage of having their visionary founder come back and make huge changes (including killing most existing products) and come up with some innovative, catchy, consumer products that were brilliantly marketed. BB doesn't have such a visionary founder/leader (people at the level of Steve Jobs aren't exactly in great supply in the world) and it has more-or-less abandoned the high-growth, high-potential consumer market to focus on a niche that better fits its product lines. And that would be fine for BB's other lines of business (QNX, BBM, BES), but smartphones are a consumer-first product, even if they didn't start that way in the early 90's. That's why Apple is being so successful in the enterprise.

Yes, IMO, it was extremely foolish and myopic of BB to rename itself from RIM to the name of a failing, damaged product brand. Yes, the BB brand name had had power and cachet in the market in the early 2000s, but by the time RIM changed its name to BB in 2013, the BB brand name was heavily damaged, and it seems like the only people who didn't know that worked in the Waterloo echo chamber.

Plus, a new (non-BB-related) name for BB10 would have sent a message that this new product line was different and separate from the BBs that people had once loved but had grown to hate. It would have been instant shorthand to tell the world "these phones are all new!" BB management, of course, went the opposite way and wrapped itself in its damaged, hated brand name, and that alone has greatly hurt the adoption of many products - BBM and BES, as well as BB10, are all too strongly associated with BBOS to gain traction in the market, especially for people who own a different brand of smartphone but might have been interested in BBM or BES.

I don't think Chen would have made the same mistake, but Thor was a loyal member of Team Mike & Jim and had the same flawed, BB-can-do-no-wrong thinking that helped to kill (or, at least, severely wound) the company.

I agree. They should have never changed from RIM. Research in Motion is a broad name that says alot. RIM could have "killed" the BlackBerry brand of phones and release another variant with updates and blah blah blah.

Not Fours Years But A Lifetime

[CTU2fan]

No offense intended toward the OP and anyone who agrees, but this is kind of dumb. Recently I've been seeing ads where Domino's Pizza is changing their name to Domino's. Why? It's stupid. Whatever they call themselves, it's still going to be the exact same nasty sauce and cheese on cardboard crust that they've sold for years. Name changes are a gimmick, and a poor gimmick that nobody buys.

Say BlackBerry changes their name to something else, then what? It's still not Apple or Android, in which case it's a fail more than WP and BB10 are now. OK, maybe they go Android with a new name. Then you've got a random device with no brand recognition that won't be competitive on the all-important price/specs spectrum that drives that market.

I do agree they should have kept the RIM name. Keeping RIM while releasing BB10 and the BB10 devices as a new line without calling them BlackBerries could have been a good move. But even then it's all just window dressing.

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[Jakob Greve]

Hmm the super bowl add campaign the delay in launching and the not getting along with carriers - party due to apple quotas partly due to fumbling also comes to mind.

[Nicholas Recker]

It might attract more consumers. But could ruin the enterprise and business part of it.

Where I am, we trust blackberry as a name in mobile security and encryption.

The problem with it, is some people see blackberry as a amazing secure phone, while others don't like them and don't trust the name.

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[pbfan]

QNX inside