I saw a very interesting hope or wish for new type of BlackBerry service plan when the CameraBerry is finally announced. What do you think about a pre-paid BlackBerry service plan?
Can you imagine the logo? Amp’d BlackBerry… It’s cool as $#!+
Personally, I don’t think that it would every fly. The demographic is all wrong. Granted, Research in Motion is going after consumer market that wants multimedia, MP3, a digital camera, etc., however, Research in Motion is far from putting out a device that competes with the SideKick or the Helio.
The idea of a pre-paid BlackBerry does make me wonder about something else, however. How long will it be before we start seeing QWERTY keyboards on pre-paid mobiles kind of like we see digital cameras today?
The prepaid market is probably the worst one to go after. Low profits, high churn, it’s a nightmare. Most carriers only offer prepaid because they feel they have to in order to compete.
RIM has so many more exciting business opportunities and markets to pursue than prepaid. That’s bottom feeding.
I do think that like disposable digital cameras, it might be inevitable that we get a kind of disposable, prepaid portable email/IM device. But RIM would be crazy to go after that market.