“Blackberry fans are messaging experts, and we knew with Blackberry 10 we had to take it to a whole new level to address their needs, and we’re certainly hitting the mark with this.” - In video, Patrick of Blackberry
Whether they’ve hit the mark or not with a solid product is almost a side issue at this point. Declining sales of BlackBerry products are a problem, yes. Two other problems have recently popped up though, also due to Blackberry unpopularity.
Blackberry CEO Thorsten Hein recently said that, “We’re still selling Blackberry 7 devices into the market and we will continue to do so because they are pretty strong in the entry level segments and lots of regions and we will continue to do this over the next month. So the transition period from Blackberry 7 to Blackberry 10 is probably going to be one and a half to two years and that gives us really time to move from Blackberry 7 to Blackberry 10.” Such a statement is not encouraging to many, especially investors. With a transition period from Blackberry 7 to Blackberry 10 between one and a half to two years, many new releases of Android and perhaps even iPhones will transpire within that time. Selling a then older Blackberry 10 may be a hard sell.
Another problem for RIM is their subscribers – or lack thereof.
Research in Motion is taking hits by investors that foresee Research In Motion being unable to collect as much in monthly services fees as it has in the past. It seems as though iPhone / Androird popularity is just too great to compete as usual for RIM. As a result, in Q3 of 2012 RIM shipped just shy of 7 million BlackBerry smartphones and a bit more than a quarter million PlayBook tablets. Those numbers were very disappointing to analysts and investors, coming in well below expectations. RIM even lost about 1 million subscribers in the same quarter.
Heins has optimistic hopes for Q4. He says that “Starting in the fourth quarter, we will begin seeing revenue from BlackBerry 10 devices. With the introduction of the BlackBerry 10 mobile computing platform, we will be transforming our service revenue model to reflect different usage levels of our network infrastructure, and different value-added software security and service packages, so we plan to offer a range of security, mobile device, and application management services, in addition to communication services.”
RIM’s loss of existing business and cash over recent years makes the debut of the BlackBerry 10 a critical release. One that will truly make the crossroads of the company’s survival or death.