BlackBerry 10 is coming tomorrow. If RIM's new OS succeeds, it'll be the biggest comeback story mobile tech has ever seen. Once the dominant smartphone OS in the USA, BlackBerrys are down to 1.1 percent market share.
No other first-generation smartphone leader has been able to pull off this kind of rebirth. Palm and Symbian are dead and Microsoft is struggling. But RIM has a chance to carve out its own market with tomorrow's launch of BlackBerry 10. In descending order of importance, here are the six things I think RIM needs.
1. Why?
BlackBerry 10 can't just be good: it needs to explain why people should buy it rather than the safer, more dominant Android and Apple OSes. What's so different and compelling about BlackBerry 10 that you're willing to give up having the same phone as your family and friends? If the OS is too strange, it'll scare people, but if it isn't different enough, buyers may decide that they can get a similar experience from bigger players.
2. The Top 100 iOS Apps, Every Month
RIM has been doing a good job of nurturing small developers with its BlackBerry Jam events, but small, exclusive apps aren't why people buy a new platform. BlackBerry OS needs to have the top iOS apps that are most talked about, and it needs to have them every month. That means securing the full cooperation of a limited group of large developers. As Windows Phone has found, people don't want "Where's My Hydrogen Dioxide," even if the gameplay is the same as "Where's My Water." They want the brand-name app their friends have, and they don't want to feel like they're giving anything up.
3. Nearly Immediate Availability
RIM will have a lot of buzz in the next few weeks. It needs to capitalize on that with phones in the stores, immediately, on as many carriers as possible. The company has waited a very long time to introduce BlackBerry 10, and hopefully it waited until the right carrier deals are in place. RIM doesn't want to be HP/Palm or Motorola, both of which bled away a lot of goodwill with very long delays between device announcements and availability.
4. A Wicked Portrait QWERTY (Maybe Even a Slider)
The No. 1 thing existing BlackBerry owners ask me about the new phones is, "how's the keyboard?" When they hear that the Z10 is supposed to have no hardware keyboard, they're baffled. RIM needs to fix this, stat. While hardware keyboard lovers are a niche market, they're very over-represented among the kinds of messaging-focused multitaskers that RIM is targeting. The most beloved BlackBerry hasn't been the Storm; it's the Bolds and Curves that people are still hanging on to. Need a big touch screen? Give the Torch 9810 form factor a try.
5. Ongoing Carrier Promotion and Growth
Windows Phone 7 suffered from a burst of promotion at launch time, followed by steadily flagging carrier and developer interest. RIM needs all four major U.S. carriers, and it needs all of those carriers not to lose focus after 90 days. RIM needs the carriers to still be promoting BlackBerry 10 when the iPhone 6 comes out. The first year of a new OS is like pushing a heavy rock up a hill: if you stop pushing at any point, it'll start rolling back down.
6. CEO-Friendliness
Give free BlackBerry X10s (or whatever the QWERTY model is called) to the CEOs of the Fortune 1000, with VIP tech support. BlackBerry has been losing ground in the enterprise to phones seen as sexier, more fun, and easier to use. RIM needs to reclaim business not just by selling BlackBerrys on their manageability, but making it clear that this is the phone you use to get things done. The BlackBerry Bold hit its height in 2009 because it made the iPhone look like a toy. The next BlackBerry should do the same.
For more, see PCMag's Hands On With RIM's BlackBerry 10. Also check out 6 Intriguing Features in BlackBerry 10 and our evolution of the BlackBerry slideshow above.
0 comments:
Post a Comment