One of the first things the new Research in Motion CEO, Thorsten Heins, said he is going to do is find a new marketing boss.  I think this new Be Bolder infographic illustrates why…

It’s well known that Steve Jobs didn’t really believe in focus groups and that Apple is where it is today largely in part because of one man’s vision and sense of style.

I believe, however,  that I speak for many when I say that RIM should run their marketing ideas past a few folks that don’t work for the company, or, think that BlackBerry devices are the coolest smartphones ever…

[Via Inside BlackBerry]

Obviously, RIM doesn’t market test… is a post from: RIMarkable, the Unofficial BlackBerry Weblog...

[YouTube link for mobile viewing]

I was taking a look at this recent BlackBerry commercial and I am torn on whether or not I like it.

My gut tells me that that it will appeal to people who already are, and, enjoy being BlackBerry users. I wonder, however, if it will appeal to folks who aren’t aren’t, namely new smartphone users who may not have recognized anything being done on that device less, maybe, texting (I know it is BBM).

Does this BlackBerry Commercial hit its mark? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments…

What do you think of the latest BlackBerry commercial? is a post from: RIMarkable, the Unofficial BlackBerry Weblog...

On Research in Motion’s Q3 Fiscal 2012 earnings call, co-CEO Mike Lazaridis announced that BlackBerry 10 smartphones would be delayed until late 2012 because the company is waiting on new dual-core, dual-mode, LTE chipsets that won’t become available until mid 2012.

Yesterday, however, BGR released an exclusive report citing a high-ranking RIM employee claiming that BlackBerry 10 devices aren’t delayed because RIM is waiting on a new chipset, but, because BlackBerry 10 devices don’t work.

Research in Motion responded in an official statement stating that the anonymous claims are inaccurate and uninformed reiterating that the delay is due to chipset availability and any suggestion to the contrary is simply false.

Honestly, does it really matter why BlackBerry 10 is delayed?

The sad state for Research in Motion is that they company had to immediately respond to the BGR report because it, even if improbable, sounds awfully plausible.  The fact of the matter is that Research in Motion won’t offer a smartphone on par with the iPhone 3G or Android 2.0 until late next year.

Consumers won’t care if the delay is because RIM is waiting for processors to power their phones that don’t yet exist or if the prototypes RIM are working on don’t actually work.  What they do care about is being able to get a phone that doesn’t seem inferior to the one next to it on the display shelf, and, sadly, this will be the case for RIM until at least late next year.

Does it really matter why BlackBerry 10 devices are delayed until late 2012? is a post from: RIMarkable, the Unofficial BlackBerry Weblog...

As has been said many times before, BlackBerry 7 is far from a complete overhaul to the BlackBerry OS that has been around for years.  It is more or less a refining of BlackBerry 6 that runs on much, much faster hardware.  This isn’t to say, however, that there aren’t slick little improvements in BlackBerry 7.  The web browser is much faster and actually usable. Still slower than Android, iOS, and Windows Phone 7 in most cases, but, it is in the ball park and doesn’t seem slow in comparison.  The screen resolution (Liquid Graphics) seems to be pretty good.  Most third party apps don’t take advantage of it, but, the ones that do look great.  The Bold 9900 that I’ve played with still takes forever to boot up, but, the 1.2 GHz processor is quite noticeable once it starts up.

In the time that I’ve had to play with BlackBerry devices running BlackBery 7, there really is no single killer feature that would make me say you’ve got to upgrade to a new phone if you have a BlackBerry 6 device in your pocket that you are happy with.  I will say, though, that my favorite feature of BlackBerry 7 thus far, is Add to Existing Contact.  Third party apps bring this ability to devices running older version of the BlackBerry OS, but, RIM has finally decided to add this natively to BlackBerry 7 and it is a much welcomed addition.

What I like most about BackBerry 7 thus far… is a post from: RIMarkable, the Unofficial BlackBerry Weblog...

RIM put out a Tweet the other day that insinuated that the new BlackBerry 7 devices were going to be announced yesterday, July 26th.    The exact verbage…

You got it! New #BlackBerry devices are coming w/ our new OS, BlackBerry 7! Check back tmrw 4 deets on #BB7FanNight. ^CH

Most people, myself included, took this to mean that RIM was going to release details on new BlackBerry 7 devices that are coming.  What RIM actually meant was that they were releasing details on #BB7FanNight…  That is a load of BS and RIM knows it…

For all those that are saying this Tweet doesn’t say that RIM is announcing anything  about details on new BlackBerry 7 devices coming out, stop lying to yourself and stop being so naive.  This Tweet is ambiguous at best, but, really more like a lie with plausible deniability if people misinterpret it’s intent.

This Tweet was intentionally written in a way to bait folks into talking about RIM more so than they would have if RIM had just been announcing a contest.  Well, I guess that worked, but, at what cost to RIM’s already tarnished reputation?

RIM’s ‘Big Announcement’ hurt more than it helped… is a post from: RIMarkable, the Unofficial BlackBerry Weblog...

A co-worker just walked into my office and said, “I just killed my phone at lunch.  I left it on the roof of my car and pulled off.  It got all busted up, so, I need to replace it immediately.”  I asked them what phone did they just destroy and they said,  ”a BlackBerry Bold”.  I asked them if they were on Verizon and they said, “Yeah!”

It was then that my shoulders dropped and I let out a sigh before asking, “Do you want to stick with the BlackBerry?”  My co-worker said, “I really don’t care.  I just want something better than that phone I just busted up that can actually do some cool stuff like play Netflix and games and stuff.  And I want to get one with a bigger screen like that one with the keyboard that slides out but not so big that it feels more like a TV than a phone.”

To make a long story short, I just recommended, for the first time to a co-worker, that they don’t even look at a BlackBerry and go straight to the iPhone 4, Droid 2, or Droid Pro.  My co-worker said, “There is no new BlackBerry that I should check out?”  I said, “Not unless you buy the same BlackBerry Bold 9650 that you’ve had for over a year and are OK with it not doing the cool stuff that you just said you wanted your new phone to do.”

This is pretty sad RIM.  I would love to recommend the BlackBerry to colleagues and friends just as I have done for years.  You, however, must put new phones out that do things that people want to be able to do on smartphones these days, something, unfortunately, you haven’t really done for years…

RIM, you’ve got to get new phones out.  Give us a date. Give us some hope…

Wow… I just recommend that a co-worker not get a new BlackBerry… is a post from: RIMarkable, the Unofficial BlackBerry Weblog...

I recently had a conversation with a friend who works for a company that does BlackBerry application development.  One of the questions that I asked him was if his company had plans to come out with any new apps that take advantage of the new features coming in BlackBerry 7.  I really wasn’t surprised by the fact that he said no, but, how emphatically he said no, and, what he said next, are not good news at all for RIM if what his company is doing is indicative of what other BlackBerry developers are doing…

We have ABSOLUTELY NO plans to do any new application development for BlackBerry 7…

My friend said “We have ABSOLUTELY NO plans to do any new application development for BlackBerry 7 except maybe the  compatibility update here and there.  We chased hard after that BlackBerry 6 waterfall, and, lets just say that thousands of wasted development hours later, we aren’t going to make that mistake again.  With QNX coming out on the BlackBerry phones early next year we just don’t feel enough of our customers will adopt BlackBerry 7 to make developing specifically for it worth it.

The big question for RIM is how big this sentiment is among it’s developer community?  My friends company is a medium size software house that develops for most mobile platforms and he said that his company feels that the future of BlackBerry Apps are actually going to be Android Apps that run in QNX. 

“If BlackBerry 7 is around long enough that developing for it would actually be worth it, QNX is a lot farther away than RIM is leading us to believe.  If that is the case, it is best to get out of BlackBerry development know anyway…”

Will Enough BlackBerry Users Adopt BlackBerry 7 To Make It Worth Developing Apps For? is a post from: RIMarkable, the Unofficial BlackBerry Weblog...

The BlackBerry PlayBook is out, the device seems to be a bit better than many pre-release reviews indicated, and, the lack of a native email client doesn’t appear to be as big a deal most thought it would be.  The absence of a native email, contacts, and calendar client at launch, however, has to be seen as a pretty big blunder by RIM and one could argue that the reason it doesn’t seem as big a deal that these features are missing is because the folks that it would have been a big deal for didn’t buy BlackBerry PlayBook tablets.

RIM is working on a native BlackBerry client that, 10 days ago, RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie said would be out in 60 days and I am hoping that a few questions that I have about this client, which will be a free download for BlackBerry PlayBook owners, get answered next week at BlackBerry World…

1. Will it support BlackBerry Enterprise Server? — I think that many have just taken it for granted that the BlackBerry PlayBook email client will support BES mail accounts?  Granted, people that have BES mail have, generally have BlackBerry devices, but, will the native email client allow you to connect to your organizations BES server without having to use BlackBerry Bridge?
2. Will it support Active Sync? — The BlackBerry PlayBook is touted to be the world’s first professional-grade tablet.  To assume, however, that world isn’t full of professionals whom access their corporate email via Active Sync will leave a hole the size of Texas for RIM’s competitors to drive right though.
3. Will it support BIS? –  Believe it or not I know several people that picked up the BlackBerry PlayBook that use iPhones, WP7, Android, and even webOS devices for their phones. Will RIM take the opportunity to introduce , or, reintroduce BIS mail to PlayBook owners not using a BlackBerry.  It may be easier to convert them over to BlackBerry devices, or, bring them back to the platform when you show or remind them what true push is like.
4. Will it support IMAP? — ‘Virtually all modern e-mail clients‘ support IMAP.  RIM, it will be hard to take your native client seriously if it doesn’t support what is considered to be a standard amongst all email clients.
5. Will it support 3rd party plugins? — One of the coolest applications that I have installed on both my BlackBerry and in Outlook on my laptop, destkop, and netbook is Xobni.  There are other mailbox plugins like Plaxo, LinkedIn, and Gist, who was recently acquired by RIM that make dealing with email and contacts easier.  Will RIM allow native email client functionality to be extended?

These are just a few of the things that I’d like to know bout the upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook native email client.  Some are more important than others, and, I am sure that I left some pretty important questions off the list.  Let’s hope that RIM sheds light on what the native BlackBerry PlayBook email client will and won’t do next week at BlackBerry World.

5 Things I’d Like To Know About The Upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook Native Email Client is a post from: RIMarkable, the Unofficial BlackBerry Weblog...

Over the weekend I read an interesting article over on the NYT online where Research in Motion founder and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis gave an interview and seemed to go on a bit of a rant asking the following series of questions…

“Why is it that people don’t appreciate our profits? Why is it that people don’t appreciate our growth? Why is it that people don’t appreciate the fact that we spent the last four years going global? Why is it that people don’t appreciate that we have 500 carriers in 170 countries with products in almost 30 languages?”

Well, Mr. Lazaridis, I have a few questions for you…  Why is it that RIM doesn’t appreciate that consumers don’t want to carry both a BlackBerry for email and a smartphone for everything else?  Why is it that RIM doesn’t appreciate that allowing 5, maybe 6 versions of the iPhone to come out before you release a single BlackBerry that can legitimately rival it makes you look inept as a technology company?  Why is it that RIM doesn’t appreciate what made the BlackBerry the coolest device on the market 5 or 6 years ago may not be enough to make it cool today?  Why is it that RIM doesn’t appreciate that most consumers in North America and many in Europe just don’t appreciate the BlackBerry anymore?!?

Mr. Lazaridis, you can tell us about how well RIM is doing, how many BlackBerry devices RIM is selling, or even how beloved the BlackBerry is in a lot of countries not named Canada or the United States, but, I think, actually, what you may fail to appreciate is just how little any of that matters when BlackBerry devices are seen as inferior to their competition.  I truly believe that RIM is trying to put the BlackBerry on par with it’s competitors, and, eventually will get there, however, there is no question that the BlackBerry will continue to lose market share hand over fist in the places where you wonder why the BlackBerry isn’t appreciated as much as you think should be until you actually give consumers a device they can appreciate…

I know, Mr. Lazaridis, that you don’t fully understand why there’s this negative sentiment towards the BlackBerry and Research in Motion, but, what you must appreciate is that people don’t tend to say things like “the BlackBerry kind of sucks compared to the iPhone and Android, but, the darn thing just sells so well in Malaysia”.  If you want people to appreciate RIM, build a device that people want.  It is as simple as that…

Why Is It That People Don’t Appreciate RIM? is a post from: RIMarkable, the Unofficial BlackBerry Weblog...