When you think about celebrities and mobile devices, what platform do you think about? I am guessing that most people probably think about Blackberries. Considering all of the fuss about President Obama and his Blackberry, is it really a surprise? I know that some celebs have been using iPhones lately, but Blackberries have always been one of their top phones. RIM likes to do things like launch parties for their new devices that almost always involve some red carpet event to make celebs feel right at home.
Well…how has pimping their smartphones out to celebrities helped them lately? Read on…
From an enterprise perspective, RIM is going all out against Microsoft these days. I am more of a fan of Exchange and Microsoft ActiveSync than I am of the Blackberry solutions, but it works for a lot of people.
Blackberries have always been known as good business devices, amazing messaging devices, and decent personal devices that keep you addicted to staying connected. I really believe that 2008 kicked off RIM’s quest to really compete in the consumer market. I know that the Curve and Pearl were consumer devices, but with the release of the Bold and Storm, they are really starting to compete.
In 2008, Research In Motion’s sales went up 96.7%. They almost doubled the number of devices they sold. Considering they were up against some very nice Windows Mobile devices and of course the iPhone juggernaut, that’s not bad at all. They raised their market share from 9.6% to 16.6% worldwide, second only to Symbian.
So…did celebrity swag help them out? Probably. I am sure that is not the only reason that their sales went up though. How many Verizon commercials do you see on an average night with Jim from Office Space talking about all of the snazzy things his Blackberry Storm can do? Compare that to the number of Nokia commercials or Windows Mobile commercials…hmmm…
As a developer, this is what I want to see. While Blackberry may not be the most capable and robust platform right now, they are more than making up with it by truly supporting their market on the business and consumer level. Since Java is one of the first programming languages that most new programmers learn, I think Blackberry is a very good starter platform. Keep in mind that many of the Java apps you write for a Blackberry can easily be ported to Symbian, Windows Mobile, and even some feature phones since they all have Java support.
Celebrities + advertising + sexy new devices + Obama’s endorsement = a great year for Blackberry and an encouragement to Blackberry developers.
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