Posted by Leonard Steinberg on June 1st, 2012

The number of brokers switching from Blackberry has grown dramatically over the past year: An increasing number of top companies and government departments that were once devoted to the Blackberry are instead now giving some staff the option of using Apple Inc’s iPhone or smartphones running off of Google Inc’s Android-operating system. Will the Blackberry-wielding broker be a thing of the past?

There is now a real danger for RIM that such switching will gather pace and turn into a much bigger exodus of customers, although if you speak to the average I-phone user, they do lament the loss of the very business-friendly Blackberry they once used to rely on. I personally have great difficulty switching technologies as it takes me a while to learn anything tech-related. I have to say however that the new Blackberry I own is a disaster: just by holding it in the wrong way it dials numbers on its own, resets settings, takes photo’s of my feet….all the things it had never done before in older models. Maybe Blackberry lost its way by trying to do everything to all people?  Maybe the market has a place for a phone that actually is mostly geared towards business? Surely many of the i-phone features are more entertainment than work-related?

Now Blackberry/Research in Motion may be sold: The uncertainty surrounding RIM’s future, and the possibility of a sale, is “scary to an end user,” said John Hering, chief executive of Lookout, one of the world’s biggest providers of mobile security products. Within 12 hours of RIM’s announcement, Hering said, he heard from several corporate technology executives troubled by the news.

RIM needs to solve problems for the customer not dabble with trying to be a company it obviously has failed to be. If they were to release a simpler, super-effective business focused device, their future would be much brighter.  Maybe a device where the keys were large enough for human hands and eyes? I know this is true as I still see many, many i-phone broker devotees carrying a ‘supplementary’ Blackberry in their pockets… I wish Bang & Olufsen would buy them out and instill the same simplistic design philosophy they apply to their audio/visual products.