Why Nokia and Blackberry should be scared ?

I recall working at Motorola at a time when we were gaining significant market share in the mobile handset market. Yet the gains were precarious, we produced some very attractive phones (the Razor was a first of a kind) and although the user interface and software reliability was not 100% there, the phones looked the part. Looking back, I was always concerned about the software reliability (since it was part of my job) but in fact we should have much more concerned about the usability and the Interface. Something the Microsoft has always been aware of.

When I look at the Nokia and Blackberry offerings currently on the market, the phones look ok, they work ok, but somehow there is something unfamiliar about the user Interface. It is almost as if the User Interface Fashion (UI-Fashion maybe) has swung - very much in favour of the Android and iPhone. Even though the target markets for the Nokia and Blackberry phones may be slightly different than that of the iPhone or Android, this does not diminish the fact that the interface needs to be in fashion and needs to be familiar to any user (of course I am implicitly assuming the phones look good, work well and are packed with functionality).  When it comes to phones and especially smart-phones we are past the stage of worrying about reliability, performance, functionality etc ... these are given, they simply must be there. Now what counts is the fashion - that is until the next big technological jump ! So RIM and Nokia take note ...

3 years on from this original post and things are as predicted the fall of RIM

Comments

  1. AvronoNovember 5, 2010 at 7:22 AM

    This just in ...

    http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ditching_rim_dell_bank_of_america_citigroup_saying_farewell_to_blackberry.php

    ReplyDelete
  2. Alexsander LoulaNovember 5, 2010 at 8:37 AM

    Avron,

    Excellent post! Let's see how MeeGo powered phones will perform.

    Pls change this theme, it's terrible to read.

    Tks.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AvronoNovember 5, 2010 at 10:48 AM

    Hi Alex,

    Thanks for you comment, theme changed !

    It will be very interesting to monitor MeeGo, any idea of roadmap product releases ?

    ReplyDelete
  4. AvronoNovember 5, 2010 at 11:37 AM

    More news on market share

    http://www.phonesreview.co.uk/2010/11/04/rim-blackberry-losing-to-android-in-q3-says-report/

    ReplyDelete
  5. AvronoNovember 5, 2010 at 11:43 AM

    For those unfamiliar with Intel and Nokias Linux OS offering ... http://meego.com/about

    ReplyDelete
  6. AvronoNovember 9, 2010 at 6:00 AM

    Further evidence as Samsung officially dumps Symbian http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-10/01/samsung-dumps-symbian

    ReplyDelete
  7. AvronoAugust 3, 2011 at 2:21 AM

    Although this post is now over 6 months old - it still seems to be holding up. With the annocement of the new Blackberry offering there is nothing that seems business changing http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/03/att-blackberry-torch-9810-9680-bold-9900/
    Except an ill-fated attempt to become more Android like ....

    ReplyDelete

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