Blackberry isn’t number one, or even number two, in smartphone mindshare. However, for a number three or four on the pie charts I sure see a lot of Blackberry devices where I work, and just about everywhere I go.
Blackberry has made a couple of attempts to make a more iPhone-like smartphone in the Storm and Storm2, but neither has won many over.
A potential new Blackberry phone may be a lot more successful with the Blackberry faithful than the Storm. Pictures swirling around the web this week show a Storm-like device with a vertical QWERTY slider, similar to the Palm Pre design.
The problem with Blackberry is that the os is pretty dated and doesn’t lend itself to impressing people that have used iPhone, Android or webOS. However, if you like Blackberry, you like Blackberry, and there is no small number of people who do. So what is the market for a Blackberry with no physical keyboard and a capacitive touchscreen? None really. The Blackberry aficionados aren’t interested and neither are the non-RIM smartphone faithful.
Introducing a capacitive touchscreen smartphone with a real keyboard is a no-brainer for RIM, and I’m surprised it took this long for them to figure it out. This will be the phone that all Blackberry users will want. Now please update the os to something that looks like it’s from this decade, RIM.
