Bye Bye, BlackBerry
This week comes the news that apparently BlackBerry holding company Research in Motion (RIM) is putting the company up for sale. And it may be a fire sign sale at that.
Earlier this year, the company used the tech news media to convince Wall Street, investors and most importantly their consumers that their new BlackBerry 10 operating system and platform was the saving grace for their entire technology fiefdom.
My response? "Nah!! Never happen."
I knew that this BlackBerry 10 Hail Mary was a last death-rattle of a dying tech company.
My fair disclaimer to the reader: I'm not a BlackBerry or Apple guy ... not at all. In fact, I will never own a BlackBerry, Mac, iPhone, iPad; that's how strongly I am against their technology platforms.
If there's anything more annoying than some gooey-eyed Apple aficionado sidling up to me uninvited at a bar to show me their new iPhone 5, it's trying to have any kind of meaningful conversation with a 'Crackberry' addict as they manically type away on their tiny screens.
This is why I say good riddance to the BlackBerry family of absurdly proprietary products. We don't need them anymore. Even the BlackBerry people themselves are slowly awakening from a tech-induced fog to realize that their screens are too damn small and their proprietary platform too much a walled-in garden.
Now the BlackBerry assets may well be sold to a Google (à la Motorola) or some other acquirer, but the brand will definitely slink unheralded into oblivion.
As we the people, become more and more tech-savvy and less vain about our technology, tech consumers become more realistic and less brand loyal. For instance, BlackBerry just wasn't able to respond to the screen-size difference that their increasingly screen-size sensitive consumers were feeling due to the bigger screens provided by Apple and more importantly, the substantially bigger screens of Samsung.
Samsung's Galaxy smartphone line continues their decimation of Apple's dwindling iPhone products. At more than 30 percent of the global smartphone market share, it mightn't be long until Samsung puts Apple back in their place as an also-ran tech company with no meaningful leadership or innovation edge. With iPhone's current global market share at 13 percent and dropping like a lead balloon, it is not as unimaginable as it once was that Apple may end up with a measly 4 percent of the smartphone market as their hubris led them to in the world desktop market versus the PC.
Apple, interestingly is feeling their consumer angst at the smaller iPhone screen situation and this is the direct reason why they are almost down to a single-digit market share of smartphone sales ... not Steve Jobs' death. Unless Apple can reverse the screen-size advantage and 'use-ability' superiority of the Samsung Galaxy family of products, they may well be next to walk the technology plank into the deep, dark and unforgiving waters of tech extinction that now shortly will engulf BlackBerry.
Bye bye, BlackBerry ... "may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."
