Among cell phone devices, the Blackberry has always represented a case in itself, both in terms of market target and in terms of technical characteristics. The company that produces it, the Canadian Research In Motion (RIM), has focused a lot on the aspect of practicality and on that of use in business scope. His devices have always stood out for out-of-the-box choices, for example regarding the input interface (trackball, qwerty keyboard) or software technology (operating system, push email). Yet, today, the new Blackberry may surprise everyone.
Looking at a first photo of the Blackberry, the object doesn't look very different from an Apple or Samsung smartphone, above all due to the lack of the typical “qwerty” micro-keyboard that had characterized almost all RIM devices so far. The latter is in fact one of the peculiarities that have been the cross and delight of the Canadian company which reached 1 million BlackBerry subscribers in 2004 and continued to grow up to 9 million in 2007 and then settled on niche market values between 2008 and 2012, with intermediate revaluation peaks.
For many analysts this is thelast chance that RIM has to get back on track in the highly competitive smartphone market. “Most customers have already drawn their own conclusions about these devices. To carve out a place among the greats, you need to surprise”, he writes for example MarkSue by RBC Capital Markets, in a note to clients.
The alignment to the iPhone/Android/Windows Phone style, with a touch screen scrolling from which to select applications certainly does not shine for originality, but surprising for the choice to focus on technology already tested by competitors, a road rarely followed in the past by RIM. There will also be a model of the same smartphone with a raised keyboard, physical, not digital, precisely so as not to disappoint the public of aficionados, but it is clear that it is no longer a question of that exclusivity on which to leverage.
RIM, which let it be known that from now on it wants to identify itself only with the name of its flagship product (the ticker on Wall Street will be BBRY and no more Rimm), will also start distributing its operating system, which is certainly one of the most interesting new features of the Blackberry. Among the pre-installed applications, there is also “buffer“, which is a small system that allows you to update multiple social networks at the same time and to schedule the publication itself. A clue perhaps to understand that RIM knows it has to get out of an impasse and wants to do so by finally winking at the consumer clientele.
