While other companies tried to copy the BlackBerry, one has to always recognize that its original appeal was email access.
Few could copy the way RIM (NASDAQ:RIMM) and its BlackBerry handled email.In the late 1990s everyone in Silicon Valley had a BlackBerry, and we’ve all seen people glued to the things like fiends, as if every message actually was that important.
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Today we are more likely to see people glued in much the same way, but now to an iPhone or some other new-generation smartphone, or what I like to call an app phone.
The minute Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone appeared and rocketed to glory, everyone was wondering what RIM would do for its third act. So far, the company has been in the tank with a couple of real dogs.
The first howler was RIM’s Storm, which I personally tried and found to be impossible to use and also annoying. Now we see the PlayBook, which will turn out to be a disaster.
For a company that got its reputation and hung its future on email, exactly why can’t the RIM PlayBook retrieve any? If you hook a phone to it, you can get your messages, yes. But that’s just ridiculous. Why can’t the thing retrieve email like every other tablet in the world just by itself?
I’ve been under the impression that RIM was a company that could get through any downturn. But I never thought much about it muddling through a paradigm shift caused by a disruptive device — the app phone.
It’s almost impossible to make a comeback from two glaring mistakes such as the Storm and the PlayBook. You’d have to hit a home run the next time at bat, even though RIM has not made any contact with the ball at all.
Here is my fear: The Waterloo, Ontario-based company has lost touch with reality and its customer base. Seriously.
How do you bring out a pad computer to compete in the market when you are known as the king of the hill in email, and then leave email out of the equation? It’s flabbergasting.
What it tells me is that RIM is off the rails. I kind of sensed this with the unusable Storm phone and the fact that the company appears to have no clue about apps, or their importance in marketing these new devices.
Does RIM ever give products in preproduction to any real users for any period of time to get feedback? If it does, are these people browbeaten into saying good things?
I mention this because not one reviewer who is honest has had anything good to say about the PlayBook’s lack of email capability. Most laugh out loud about it. You have to wonder how a product with this flaw (and others) got released in the first place.
Did RIM managers have meetings to convince themselves that this missing feature was a good idea? “It’s great!” Did they think that because you had to attach a BlackBerry phone to the device to get email, that it would perhaps sell more phones? “Once people realize they need to also buy a phone with the PlayBook, we’ll sell more phones!”
I just don’t get this thinking. This may be the end for RIM. But I hope not.
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