Skip to main content

BB10 sneak peak - enough to save RIM?

So RIM has exploded over the past few months, up from $7.50 a share to over 12 bucks. That said, over the past five years the stock is still down over 85 per cent.

But I'll give RIM its due, I thought there was a real chance it was going to five bucks, but it proved me wrong (in the short term anyway).  I had bought some shares at $7.50, but when it didn't pop, I unloaded them.

I still would not be a buyer or RIM simply because I'm still not seeing anything from them on the marketing front that suggests they've changed.  I mean, the blackberry site hasn't changed at all and the micro site for BB10 is ugly as hell . We are now in mid-December and I haven't seen anything exciting regarding BB10.

That said, apparently this is leaked footage out of Vietnam that shows more of BB10 than we've seen in other demos.



To be honest, I wasn't blown away. Although I was slightly impressed. BB10 looks ok.

The real question is whether RIM can get customers to buy BB10 and that I think that will depend on:

- The cost of the phone
- The advantages of the phone (longer battery life?)
- Initial user reviews

Will BB10 be enough to save RIM?

My gut says it won't. I think the new blackberry's will sell well initially, but unless the user experience is simply out of this world, will quickly be marginalized among the sea of smartphones in the market.

One thing about BB10 that I don't get is the boxiness of the OS. It feels almost European in design, almost like something Nokia would design. It's not as boxy as Microsoft's Windows 8 OS, but it's still pretty boxy.

Anyway, in a couple of months RIM will either be sitting around 20 bucks a share or will be crashing to five bucks. I hope I'm wrong and the market loves the new OS. It definitely looks good, the question is whether it will be good enough.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Morgan Freeman Botches Reddit IAmA - Black Eye on PR

For those not familiar with Reddit it's basically a forum where people post interesting things on a wide variety of subjects. Postings gain popularity when people 'up vote' them and become more visible in their particular subreddit (a subreddit is simply a subject category, like politics or videos). One of Reddit's most popular subreddits is the IAmA subreddit - which allows reddit users to ask questions of various people. Over three million people subscribe to IAmA, which is also widely used by celebrities. An IAmA can last a couple hours during which Redditors (the term Reddit users call themselves) can ask the person doing the IAmA questions. The term "IAmA" comes from the concept of "I Am A doctor, ask me anything", "I Am A movie star, ask me anything" - you get the drift. IAmA's are not just for celebrities, lots of common folks do them as well. Recently Morgan Freeman did an IAmA  and it turned into a PR mess. To make a lo...

Mainstream versus Alternate Media - Where is the news now-a-days?

It's well known that CNN has been suffering an exodus of viewers, losing over half their viewership over the past couple of years. Yet Fox News has not lost viewers, but has increased its viewership slightly. It's an odd phenomena given that Fox news is clearly biased in their coverage. Mind you, so is CNN according to many. But I'd suggest it comes down to something much more simple.  While Fox may be holding its ground, the rise of alternative media is taking off where CNN left off - a focus on hard news. For those of the under 40 crowd, that's what they are looking for, NEWS. The simplest way to highlight the difference between mainstream media and alternative media is to take a look at their homepages and the stories they highlight. It becomes very clear why people are turning away from CNN and turning to alternative media. Let's look at five media sites and their homepage (click on pictures to enlarge): CNN Feature stories: CNN heroes Top t...

E-cigarettes: A PR battle Health Canada cannot win?

So I've now been using an e-cigarette (e-cig) for two months and thought I'd talk a bit about how I see the upcoming battle between Health Canada and e-cigs going. First though, let's do a quick overview of what exactly an e-cig is. Basically an e-cig vaporizes liquid that contains nicotine. The vapor is then inhaled. People who use e-cigs are called vapers (not smokers). Because the liquid is atomized (ie. vaporized), not burned the way tobacco is, vapers do not consider themselves 'smokers' in anyway. An e-cig is comprised of basically three components: The tank - this is the component that holds the juice (sometimes referred to as e-juice or e-liquid). The atomizer - this a coil and wick unit that atomizes the juice. When the coil is heated (from the battery) it atomizes the juice that has soaked into the wick. The battery - batteries for e-cigs come in various capacities (some last 8 hours, others 40+ hours, depending on their size).  The ba...