Is BlackBerry’s Best Feature… Irrelevant?
By Anna Johnson on July 12th, 2010Apple iPhone sales are soaring, Google’s Android mobile operating system is gaining traction, Palm is in the death throes and RIM’s BlackBerry… can no longer view its keyboard as a key competitive advantage.
According to Q1 data from Nielsen, 23 percent of mobile consumers now have a smartphone. While the BlackBerry operating system has the largest smartphone market share – 35 percent – it lost 2 percent share since the last quarter of 2009, while the iPhone gained 2 percent to reach a 28 percent share and Android also gained 2 percent to reach 9.8 percent.
By the end of 2010, the iPhone will probably exceed BlackBerry as the leading smartphone, with Android fast on the tails of both smartphones. Its recent launch of iPhone 4G was a huge success, with Apple selling over 1.7 million iPhone 4G devices in the first 3 days of its launch on June 24, 2010.
No doubt, those within RIM (as well as plenty of us outside the company) are probably working on strategies to ward off these mounting competitive threats. If RIM doesn’t come up with a viable solution, it will go the way of Palm.
We could speculate all day about whether Palm will survive… or what has led to its decline. That’s actually a worthwhile exercise for any entrepreneur wanting to steer their company through the competitive landscape. The bottom line is, however, that Palm doesn’t sell a product people want.
BlackBerry faces the same threat.
Before the iPhone came out three years ago, the world – particularly the corporate world – was entranced by RIM’s BlackBerry. Actually, that’s an important point: the BlackBerry was largely a business device, warmly embraced by professionals and executives who appreciated (among other things) the ability to read and write email on their mobile phone.
When Apple released the iPhone on June 29, 2007, many in the corporate world saw it as a consumer device. And perhaps it was – and has been – largely a device for everyone BUT the corporate set. It’s not uncommon for business people to have both an iPhone and a BlackBerry, with one of the biggest criticisms leveled at the iPhone being its touch screen keypad.
But here’s the thing: it’s largely BlackBerry users who’ve had issues with the iPhone touch screen keypad. They’ve trained themselves in the ‘two thumb tango’ and are just going through good old fashioned resistance to change.
Those of us who started using an iPhone BEFORE trying out a BlackBerry are actually finding the iPhone touch screen keypad to be a breeze to use while just about everything about the BlackBerry – including the keypad – is, by comparison, CLUNKY.
Here’s the point: what many have said is the BlackBerry’s best feature – its keyboard – will increasingly become irrelevant. Touch screens will render hardware based keyboards a thing of the past and unless the BlackBerry can come up with an iPhone killer it will also become irrelevant.
BlackBerry can’t rely on its corporate stronghold forever – those corporate executives using BlackBerrys will increasingly demand the much more feature-rich, user-friendly iPhone. And let’s face it, many people are getting tired of carrying around more than one mobile device.
I’m not sure what the answer is for BlackBerry. As I said, the brains at RIM are probably obsessed with this very question. Perhaps the answer is to embrace Android in some way. Whatever the case, it’s time for BlackBerry to lose the hardware keyboard and come up with a real competitive advantage.
Source: Don Kellog, “iPhone vs. Android,” June 4, 2010
