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BlackBerry: We are non-corporate rebels and we’re streaking the quad!

by JG Mason on May 5, 2009 at 11:10 AM

The thing about tech is you stop paying attention for a few minutes and the whole game changes.  Apparently, BlackBerry’s customer base is now over 50% non-corporate, according to CEO Jim Balsillie.  If you’ve not been paying attention to BlackBerry, like me, you might have missed this transformation.  Regardless, they are bending, if not breaking, “immutable laws”.

Led by slimmer and more stylish phones like the Curve, Pearl and all-the-rage types like the Storm, BlackBerry has managed to shift its brand from stodgy old white guys in suites to hipsters and common man/women everywhere.  Even U2 is rocking the BlackBerry.  Now word comes that the Blackberry is outselling the iPhone.  How the heck did they manage that?

From the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing:

#20. the law of change ­ Brands can be changed, but only infrequently and very carefully.

Was this transformation a very careful maneuver?  I am not so sure, I mean look at the sheer number of phones they’ve thrown at the market.  It seems like more a shotgun effect and see what sticks.  Their one winning strategy is get devices on every carrier; something Palm needs to think long and hard about with its new Pre and webOS.

With the Storm on Verizon, seen by many of us as a challenge to the iPhone, the phone managed to sell over a million units since launch here in the US.  Not too shabby for a phone that’s been bashed by most of the tech press, and for good reason.  The phone just didn’t provide the experience Blackberry users expected nor did it compete with the iPhone in terms of usability.  However, RIM seems convinced to get it right.

In the wings is the next-generation Storm that is sure to fix some of the woes the first one suffered from.  A reworked text input method as well as possible Wi-Fi onboard has been rumored.  As consumers become the target of the company, we can expect more smartphones in more designs on more carriers.  Clearly, RIM is working very hard and its growth and sales prove the point.

Source: [Reuters]

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