You’ve probably heard by now that Cingular has just released the new BlackBerry 7130c and, along with it, a new service plan called the BlackBerry Personal Plan.
The new BlackBerry Personal Plan from Cingular offers customers direct and easy access to their Internet e-mail accounts for as low as $29.99 per month. The plan is designed solely for use with the newly enhanced BlackBerry Internet ServiceTM (note: this plan excludes access to BlackBerry Enterprise ServerTM). In addition, customers can select the new, EDGE-enabled BlackBerry 7130c handset for as low as $199.99. The solution, which will be available beginning next week in Cingular retail stores, is ideal for on-the-go consumers such as young professionals who need to stay in touch and parents who spend their days juggling work and family activities.
The question that I have is if the new BlackBerry Personal Plan is a sign of more consumer friendly BlackBerries to come?
Personally, I think that the current line of BlackBerry devices, the 7130c included, are much more compelling when they are hooked up to a BlackBerry Enterprise Server. I am already on the record for saying that as a mobile phone, the BlackBerry is average at best.
Although I agree with Cinglar’s executive director of mobile professional solutions, Mike Woodward, when he says “Clearly wireless email can benefit more than just corporations”, I think that RIM has to offer more compelling features on upcoming BlackBerry models if it is going to sway the consumer that just wants to be able to check email while on the go if they can get more “mobilephonelike” features on other devices.
When you take BES out of the mix, RIM has stiff competition in the consumer wireless email market from the likes of Microsoft, Palm, Nokia, and Motorola. The release of BlackBerry Personal Plan may be the entrance of Research in Motion into the consumer market from a pricing standpoint. Lets hope that it will be soon followed by an entrance of new consumer oriented hardware options to that market as well.
Read more…
It does seem as if RIM is wanting more and more to go after the consumer market, and not just the enterprise market.
However, they have to walk a fine line. One the one hand they don’t want to disrupt their enterprise business, which actually favors simpler devices, no camera/multimedia features, etc. On the other hand, the only way they will win over the general consumer is by building into their phones the more exciting features that the consumer market demands: camera, media player, etc.
My guess is that if they do come out with a phone that has camera, memory, etc., they will try very hard to distinguish it in form and style from their other devices, to avoid alienating their enterprise users. One rumor that has been floating around is that they will introduce a clamshell consumer phone, built largely by Samsung. It would seem a logical way to proceed: an entirely different form factor, so the product differentiation is clear, and using a company with a history of building these consumer friendly features into phones. Time will tell.
I think the clamshell you are talking about is called the Samsung SGH-T719. It has a QWERTY keyboard similar to those found on the BlackBerry 71XX devices and it will license SureType from RIM so it will work like a BlackBerry as well.
I think you make a very good point about it being logical for RIM to allow other handset makers to come out with alternative form factor BlackBerries. Why reinvent the wheel if you can just re-tread and existing one.
Thanks, Robb…that’s exactly what I was thinking of.
I really do think that RIM is very weary of creating a BB device that includes camera, memory card, etc, that looks too much like their existing models that have so much appeal to enterprise users.
I know many people have brought up one simple fact: that if you work for the govt or some industry where security is vital, that when entering these workplaces the one item that is not scrutinized is the BB, because everyone knows that the BB lacks these security-compromising features. Many enterprise users purchase BBs largely with this in mind: no security risk.
The moment RIM releases a BB that has these exciting consumer features but looks alot like another BB model, everything changes for them in the enterprise sector. All of a sudden there is potential confusion in their most valued market. I don’t think they want that.
Therefore, from an identity standpoint, BB has to be very careful. They’ve gone out of their way to create a market identity that clearly favors corporate use: stable, secure, dependable, etc. But like many things that work great for corporate users, that leaves them rather bland for consumer use.
So going back to your point, it might make even more sense for RIM to allow these other BB devices to even be sold under the brand names of these other manufacturers to avoid confusion. And that would also play into RIM’s strategy of wanting to really dominate the software side of the market, rather than hardware.
Kind of refining my thoughts:
I believe that perhaps RIM’s fondest dream would be this: to market their software solutions to a wide variety of vendors, and thus become known as the software provider of choice among mobile users.
Along with that, they could retain their hardware business whereby they manufacture devices that solely focus on email, as they currently do.
So that if a consumer wants an exciting model with many features, but with the wonderful BB email solution, then they can have it.
Enterprise users would still rely on BB branded hardware with the software.
BB could even market their entire OS to various smartphone vendors. With Windows Mobile kind of lacking, and the Palm OS not having been developed much for a few years, there is an opportunity there as well.
I’ll say this much: If the BB OS (the entire OS…not just BB connect) were on the Motorola Q, that would be an amazing device. As it is, the Q is crippled by the Windows Mobile OS.
I think the Moto Q is crippled because it is a Moto. The WM5 OS is pretty cool, just that you have to remember to completely shut down the application that you were running or you run out of memory. It suffers from poorly explained manuals and poorly trained sales reps that never demo the devices correctly for the consumer…
Until MS puts in a hard-stop feature on their devices so that when you hit close/end/stop it closes, the app will stay open in the background (unfortunately)…
I’m not sure what all the hype is about — T-Mobile has offered Unlimited BBConsumer plans for $19.99 and Enterprise plans for $29.99 for 2+ years… This is just Cingular playing catchup and realizing that TMOB had been winning all the consumer business…
Only on WM would the close button really just send the application to the background, with it still running. It’s dumb, confusing, and creates a lot of memory problems for the user.
Beyond that, I’ve found that WM just doesn’t work that well. On the Treo 700w, it’s awful. The Palm OS version is so superior. WM, at least in my experience, seems to freeze up far more than any other OS for smartphones.
As for the Q, I agree that Moto itself can have problems. So perhaps some of the blame for the slow menu response should go to Moto, instead of MS…although, who knows? However, the organization of the menus still leaves a lot to be desired, and that’s the WM OS.
But if Moto could put out a version of the Q with the BB OS that ran as well as the BB8700, that would be one awesome device.