Blackberry became the big name in smartphones by making emailing dead simple. In the middle part of last decade, that's what mattered. People were mostly used to mobile phones for making calls, the occasional text message, and maybe a stupid game or two.
When RIM made emailing from the road a very simple process, and created an enterprise-class system for businesses, their brand hit its peak. When they tried to leverage themselves into the consumer market, they did have some initial success. But when they were starting to actually jump into the pond--after dipping their toes in--Apple came in and sucker punched the entire market in January 2007.
All of a sudden, big players like RIM were behind the curve, figuratively and, for RIM, literally.
They essentially had a 6-month period to get phones that could compete with Apple and nobody really did a good job. The first iPhone was very vulnerable--no native apps, EDGE, and big price tag--but by the time anyone could offer an iPhone-like experience, Apple had the 3G, native apps, and a lower price tag.
RIM seemed to simply take too long to close their gaps. Their first touchscreen had a hugely misplaced marketing campaign. When RIM released the Storm, they made their SureTouch (or whatever it's called) screen a huge focus. Differentiation is certainly a product strategy, but it seemed like a fairly ridiculous thing to try to base your marketing around. At the time, a lot of people were weary of touchscreens vs. physical keyboards, but the added "value" of the SureTouch didn't come close to a physical keyboard and hindered the use of the touchscreen.
It seems like RIM's major problems were with product design / development, coupled with bad marketing. They controlled the business market, which helped drive the consumer market, and then lost control of it.
I think you hit the nail on the head with email. So much is about perception and not technology. When people think about Blackberry they think about email and business. That's it. They don't imagine awesome fun games or music players or videos or cameras even though the blackberry (in theory) has all those.
Nokia has a similar problem, I think. When people imagine Nokia they imagine a 1990s era dumb phone, or at best a crippled feature phone. It doesn't matter what else Nokia does, they are defined that way in the consumer mind.
When people think of Android they think of Google, super smart things like mapping, searching, voice recognition, translation, calendaring, etc. They feel like they are on the edge, living in the future.
And when they think of the iPhone they think of the slick, super smooth experience, the games and multimedia features, apps.
It doesn't really matter what any of these companies do, they'll continue to be defined this way and only Android & iPhone have a truly positive image in this new world. WP7 is hard to define and I'm divided on whether Nokia is good or bad because when Nokia becomes an influence on the brand it may well act like a boat anchor rather than the winch MS obviously wants it to be.
When RIM made emailing from the road a very simple process, and created an enterprise-class system for businesses, their brand hit its peak. When they tried to leverage themselves into the consumer market, they did have some initial success. But when they were starting to actually jump into the pond--after dipping their toes in--Apple came in and sucker punched the entire market in January 2007.
All of a sudden, big players like RIM were behind the curve, figuratively and, for RIM, literally.
They essentially had a 6-month period to get phones that could compete with Apple and nobody really did a good job. The first iPhone was very vulnerable--no native apps, EDGE, and big price tag--but by the time anyone could offer an iPhone-like experience, Apple had the 3G, native apps, and a lower price tag.
RIM seemed to simply take too long to close their gaps. Their first touchscreen had a hugely misplaced marketing campaign. When RIM released the Storm, they made their SureTouch (or whatever it's called) screen a huge focus. Differentiation is certainly a product strategy, but it seemed like a fairly ridiculous thing to try to base your marketing around. At the time, a lot of people were weary of touchscreens vs. physical keyboards, but the added "value" of the SureTouch didn't come close to a physical keyboard and hindered the use of the touchscreen.
It seems like RIM's major problems were with product design / development, coupled with bad marketing. They controlled the business market, which helped drive the consumer market, and then lost control of it.