One of the most heated discussions I have with friends at the moment is whether or not BlackBerry – or more specifically the parent company RIM – is going to have to drop out of the mobile phone market over the next couple of years. A few years ago if you’d asked with BlackBerrys would be failing so badly you’d be laughed at, but today there seems to be a real concern that the company isn’t able to innovate in the same way that others are.
Take HTC for example. With the HTC Desire they developed a fantastic phone, but they didn’t stop there. They’ve manufactured a range of phones – using both Android and Windows Mobile – to cater for many different tastes and budgets.
The BlackBerry main selling point used to be the full QWERTY keyboard – and there will always be a market for this type of phone. The problem is that RIM focused on this for far too long. It wasn’t until they released the BlackBerry Torch 9810 last year, which has a touchscreen and is available on some great contracts, that the company really began to embrace touchscreen.
Since then they’ve gone on to manufacture a number of other phones with touchscreen, but the fact remains that they are lagging far behind Apple, HTC and Samsung. Fans of BlackBerry will be hoping that they can do something to reverse this trend soon.
If I were in charge of RIM I would think about developing a real flagship phone. Something that can compete with the iPhone and HTC Desire HD. Samsung have done it with the Galaxy S2, so it shows it can be done, and RIM should have the resources to do it soon. Otherwise they risk fading into the background in the same way that Nokia have done in recent times.