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“Most flagship smart phones have a 1 GHz processor and a high-resolution screen, 480 x 800 pixels or greater. It’s what you might call the price of doing business. BlackBerry’s new flagship has a 624 MHz processor. Because of this, interface and software sluggishness was immediately observed by reviewers such as Laptop’s Mark Spoonauer and Engadget’s Nilay Patel at the New York launch event,” Rothman reports. “And the screen? At 360 x 480, it isn’t even close to the baseline. Apple calls its 960 x 640 iPhone 4 screen Retina Display, since it has pixels so small the eye can’t see them. The BlackBerry Torch’s display has one third as many pixels in almost the same space. As All Things D’s John Paczkowski said on Twitter, ‘They should call it Cataract Display.'”
Rothman reports, “While it’s certain that gadget pundits are quick to skewer new releases, RIM basically laid this one out on the sacrificial altar. Still, even a stronger product would have been met with savage scrutiny, because, according to industry data, RIM has no room for anything but a major hit… From February to May of this year, before Apple launched its huge-selling iPhone 4, BlackBerry’s monster market share dipped a little in the U.S., according to comScore , from 42.1 percent to 41.7 percent. Android shot up from 9 percent to 13 percent in that same time. (The iPhone share dropped from 25.4 percent to 24.4 percent, though sales were in a predictable lull on the eve of a major redesign that was not only expected, but leaked to the public.) My guess is that the next round of comScore numbers will show a drop in BlackBerry U.S. market share.”
Full article here.
Ian Scales writes for TelecomTV, “One thing has become increasingly clear over the past year or two. The smartphone OS/UI is no longer an innovation zone and a point of potential product differentiation in its own right. The OS of choice already exists in its ‘essence’ somewhere between iOS and Android.”
RIM “can never have the app numbers of the leading 2 or maybe 3 OSs in the long run,” Scales writes. “So it will fail as an OS in app terms AND it will cost its owner both time and money.”
Scales writes, “It seems to me that RIM hasn’t grappled with this.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Buh-bye RIM. As we wrote yesterday, “Listen, RIM, you had a good run, but nobody needs yet another pretend iPhone with yet another fake iOS, especially from a little outfit that still hasn’t even recognized the death of device festooned with little plastic buttons.”
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lynn W.” for the heads up.]
RIM has a niche. At this point they can put out boring clones of the SOS and they’d still have a market. To spell ‘DOOM’ for RIM at this point is a bit silly.
More likely the next ‘DOOM’ remains the Microsoft Windows Phone whatever. Their catastrophic failure of the ‘Kin’ was a bona fide death knell. Their chicken-with-its-head-cut-off antics regarding what will be their next phone OS are a blatant indication that they should just give up already.
But of course a story at MSNBC isn’t going to point out this elephant in the room.
RIM’s Blackberry… Today’s WordPerfect.
@Erk – I know exactly what BES is. The Blackberry Enterprise Server is expensive added complexity on top of the fact that you need RIM’s servers. Why have two additional layers of complexity (and expense)? My iPhone connects directly to Exchange, and can be managed by IT, should they be willing to download and learn the tools.
RIM is entrenched, but already there are signs of RIM losing its grip. If the iPhone was offered on Verizon, the trend would be even greater. I know many people, particularly in the Midwest, who have a Blackberry because they can’t get good ATT service. They have all said they would have an iPhone if it was on Verizon, but the Blackberry was the next best thing.
RIM will lose many, many sales once people look at the display in the store and see the difference in screens from the Torch, to an Android phone, to an iPhone. The Torch will look blurry compared to the other phones, and frankly, like RIM cheaped out (which it did).
This isn’t a game where RIM has to beat the iPhone or Android, but it at least has to keep pace. Failing to do something as simple as match screen resolutions with even the iPhone 3GS is pathetic and a huge mistake. People want to do more with their smartphones than read email, even on Blackberries.
“They just want to maintain market share or to slow down its erosion.”
…except they aren’t doing either.
I was offered a BlackBerry with my management position. I turned it down. I’d rather use my own iPhone than a paid-for corporate dumb-phone.
Sounds like Palm.
I predict RIM will introduce a smartphone running Android or worse- WM7 in the next 2 years as they discover they can’t compete by propping up their crappy, expensive old OS.
When that doesn’t work-
As their market share cliffs they’ll eventually start pimping themselves out as acquisition fodder.
Some desperate HW Co (M$, Nokia, maybe Dell if they are still around) will buy them in a last gasp of smartphone relevancy, only to fade away as the remaining 2 OS camps fortify their positions.
I have always recommended RIMM employees to quickly get another job while they are still “hot” in the market as enterprise mobile experts. Also it wouldn’t hurt if they learned Objective-C and UIKit while waiting…
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RIM isn’t going anywhere except up and up and up. You heard it here first. Regardless of what the apple fans say or think RIM will do very well.
@ Please
Well, you sure got us!
With such lucid, well-presented arguments supporting your statement, how could anyone disagree?
Why do so many hateful trolls enjoy seeing a company perform poorly. I perfer Coke over Pepsi, but I don’t set around hoping for Pepsi to fail. Get a life, people.