I read an article in the Globe and Mail today where Research in Motion co-CEO Jim Balsillie said that the BlackBerry will soon become the music player of choice for consumers. I actually had to read his comment several times to make sure that I understood the context in which he was saying it and after doing so, realized he meant it pretty much like you read it in the title to of this post:

The BlackBerry will soon become the music player of choice for consumers

I have one question for Jim Balsillie… Have you completely lost your mind?


Someone please tell me that I am misinterpreting what he is saying because it sure sounds to me like he is saying that “the BlackBerry will soon become the music player of choice for consumers.”

Don’t get me wrong… I love the BlackBerry. The fact that I have written about it pretty much everyday for the passed two and a half years should tell you how much, however, I have to call a spade a spade. The BlackBerry Pearl and the BlackBerry 8800 are horrible music players. They are incredibly bad and would die a death quicker than the Motorola Rokr if they didn’t do anything more than play MP3s. Thank goodness they do.

Balsillie said that he thinks it would be”10 if not 100 times harder to do the communications aspect onto an MP3 player than to do the mass media player onto a communications framework.” Not that I disagree, but, Balsillie should take a closer look at the dozens of handsets that have failed miserably at doubling as MP3 players. He should start with his very own BlackBerry Pearl.

Not that I want to turn this into a post about Apple, but, there are companies out there building dedicated MP3 players that by many accounts are much better than the iPod, yet, still they cannot make a dent in Apple’s iPod share. What makes a company that has just started marketing to consumers on the smartphone front, a market that they dominate, think that they can “soon” become the music player of choice, in a market that consists only of consumers, against arguably one of the strongest brands in consumer electronics that the world has ever known?

I guess you’ve got to have goals…