From the Editors: It’s wow—or doom—for BlackBerry
By SD Times Editorial Board
March 4, 2013 —
(Page 1 of 2)
BlackBerry’s release of the latest version of its mobile phone operating system (and next-generation phone hardware) lacked the wow factor. While existing BlackBerry customers may be delighted, there is little there to make anyone want to trade in his or her Android, iOS or Windows Phone device for a shiny new BlackBerry.
While BlackBerry was losing market share to Apple, Google and Microsoft (who leapfrogged BlackBerry with applications, cameras, touch-screens and more), Research in Motion (soon to be renamed BlackBerry) slipped to No. 5 in the hardware portion of the market, which Apple and Samsung are fighting over. As of late January, when BlackBerry 10 was announced, RIM had a paltry 4.5% of the device market, and was fifth, also trailing Nokia and HTC. Finally, in this world of BYOD, it also has lost its niche as the “mobile device of the enterprise.”
Microsoft’s phones run the Office suite of applications, making them a great choice for enterprises, and Apple and Google are remarkable consumer devices, with the lion’s share of applications available.
So how can BlackBerry get back in the game? It clearly has looked at the others’ playbooks to find its strategy: cater to developers to create a huge market of applications for the device.
As Dave Smith pointed out in his article on BlackBerry, {http://sdt.bz/39389} BlackBerry 10 gives developers choices around SDKs. That is good. The more choices it provides, the more developers it can entice to create new apps for the platform, or to migrate existing ones.
BlackBerry offers a native SDK (which is its recommended way of making apps), but also embraces Web standards and Adobe tools for applications. The company clearly hopes developers will migrate their existing Android apps to the platform.
That’s all fine and good, but BlackBerry is going to have to do better if it wants more than to simply languish at the bottom of the device pond. Everything it announced at its launch seems merely to get them close to even with the rest of the field, and that simply is not enough to get people who love their smartphones to switch.
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