9:00 PM RIM is dead, long live BlackBerry, as the Canadian mavens finally deliver BB10 phones

Dan Jones, Mobile Editor

January 30, 2013

2 Min Read
BlackBerry's Second Bite

9:00 PM -- Will a BlackBerry a day keep the profit warnings away? The company formerly known as Research In Motion has bowed to the inevitable and rechristened itself as BlackBerry as it launches the long-awaited 10 series phones. The name change has seemed like the obvious thing to do for a while now. Whenever I attended a trade show where the Canadian gadget maker was exhibiting, you never saw hide nor hair of the RIM branding. Everything was plastered with BlackBerry this and BB that. Just naming the company after fruit won't get the company its mobile mojo back though. (Side note: So the three leading smartphone operating systems -- Apple, Android and BlackBerry -- are either fruit-branded or updates named after snacks like Ice Cream Sandwich? Wild.) I suspect growth will have to come in the less smartphone-saturated parts of the world where a BlackBerry still has cachet. I'm honestly not sure what marketing genius can get BlackBerry back in the U.S. I sat listening to a group of people arguing -- for what seemed like hours -- in my local wine bar the other weekend about whether the iPhone 5 or Galaxy SIII was the best phone evah! I suspect I would have been laughed out of the place if I'd said, "Hey, what about a BlackBerry, have you seen the new phone they're coming out with?" A BlackBerry just doesn't occur to many people outside of the tech-nerd axis these days, in the same way that a Windows phone is a hard sell too. So, RIM -- sorry -- BlackBerry, will need to work its government contracts, shore up its enterprise base and build a bigger presence in the BRIC countries, where, let's face it, there's much less saturation, anyway. For more on BlackBerry 10 from around UBM Tech:

— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Light Reading Mobile

About the Author(s)

Dan Jones

Mobile Editor

Dan is to hats what Will.I.Am is to ridiculous eyewear. Fedora, trilby, tam-o-shanter -- all have graced the Jones pate during his career as the go-to purveyor of mobile essentials.

But hey, Dan is so much more than 4G maps and state-of-the-art headgear. Before joining the Light Reading team in 2002 he was an award-winning cult hit on Broadway (with four 'Toni' awards, two 'Emma' gongs and a 'Brian' to his name) with his one-man show, "Dan Sings the Show Tunes."

His perfectly crafted blogs, falling under the "Jonestown" banner, have been compared to the works of Chekhov. But only by Dan.

He lives in Brooklyn with cats.

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