The BlackBerry reboot

Remember 2006? The world was so different then. We were all younger. No one heard of Barack Obama. Everyone was using Orkut. A new microblogging service called Twitter just launched. Samsung was making phones that no one bought. Apple was known outside the geek circles just for its iPods. And in those days BlackBerry phones made by a company called Research In Motion (RIM) were the smartest phones. With their QWERTY keyboards, BB messaging capabilities and great e-mail capabilities, every well-heeled ‘prosumer’ worth his salt wanted a BlackBerry. At one point in 2006, the BlackBerry had an impressive 44.5 per cent market share in the US. Then the iPhone stuck. And the Android happened. And the world as we know has changed.

Like Nokia, Palm and many companies of that generation, RIM struggled. In the six years since, Palm has been gobbled up and then killed by HP. Nokia hitched up with another dinosaur called Microsoft and is still struggling to get the third place after Android and iOS. And finally, in 2013, in the past week, RIM came out of its cocoon, changed its name to Blackberry, released a new operating system called BB10, announced two phones called Z10 and Q10, and it now wants to start over from scratch. But the question is, ‘Is it too little, too late?’

To be fair to RIM, oops, BlackBerry, and its CEO Thorsten Heins, the company showed off some impressive software and hardware at the event. The Z10, which is an iPhone look-alike, is an all touch smartphone without any physical buttons. The Q10 is for the

keyboard enthusiasts who like nothing better than having a smartphone with a good QWERTY keyboard. And the software that runs on both these phones called BB10 comes close to iOS and Android in its sophistication.

The problem though is the fact that Z10, Q10 and BB10 are good products. Not great products. There is nothing in them that we have not seen. And there is nothing in them that makes you want to throw your iPhone 5 or Galaxy S3 in the bin. And the problem is that BlackBerry is a little late to the party. In the five to six years that it has wasted with phones like BlackBerry Storm, and the tablets like the Playbook, the world has moved on. Both iOS and Android are now mature smartphone operating systems. iOS has a very impressive, and Android a little less but nevertheless good App stores. It would take time and patience to get good developers to develop good apps for a new operating system as Microsoft is finding out with Windows Phone 8. And in the time that takes to build that good app store, both Apple and Google will move on, and there will be new iPhones and Galaxies, and maybe even Lumias. That is precious time that BlackBerry may not have with its dwindling cash piles.

And one more problem is that 2013 is not 2006. Now the top smartphones come with good security features that make them attractive to the enterprise customers, once the biggest customers of BlackBerry. And with the growing trend of ‘Bring Your Old Device’, it is to be seen how many people will want to jump on to the BlackBerry.

Having said that, just the fact that BlackBerry is trying is to be celebrated. For one, it is a brand that many of us are fond of after Nokia, and more importantly the more competition the better. So let us cheer on the new BB.

The writer is a tech geek.  Email: articles@theadarsh.net