RIM announces new BlackBerry phones.
…that won’t be able to update to their QNX platform in 2012.
Man, they are setting themselves up for even-worse-than-Nokia flameout. This will be exciting to watch.
They really are a bizarre company. I have always been bewildered by their phone names. Bold, Torch, Style, Curve, Peal, Storm, Fail. What do any of those names tell me about the phone?
What phone names do?
But yeah, they’re fucked.
“Bewildering”? I guess you have a really hard time buying cars too. Or picking which bands to listen to.
You can’t discount the brilliance of apple. What iphone do you want? What’s the highest number out? 4. I want a 4.
I have a pretty good idea an RX7 is racy, a wrangler is tough and civic is a mid-family car.
Bold? Is it a bold style that is curved? Uh oh…
What about “iPod”? Did you want the Nano? Or the (smaller) Shuffle? Or the Touch? Maybe you need an Airport Express.
I think you’re paying too much attention to names. Products do fine with meaningless titles. Think: 30 Rock. Super 8. Half-Life.
You could argue those are all examples of “in-joke puns” (or something, I’m not sure what the technical term for that sort of cleverness is). But for purchasing decisions they’re as meaningless as Bold, or Nexus One, or 3310.
I agree, but ‘nano’, ‘shuffle’ and ‘touch’ tell me something about those products.
It was a pretty stupid comment-just admit it and let’s move on. Makes no more or no less sense than Apple naming their OS’ after wild cats.
I think the Blackberry naming is just a delayed reaction to the late '90s / early 2000s phone naming landscape, when Nokia just had random strings of numbers for their phone names (looks like they’re still doing that…N86 8MP, E75, 6350).
I seem to remember Motorola was the first to really buck the trend with the RAZR, then the PEBL. I think Blackberry is still trying to do that sort of thing, 4-5 letter names that some marketing agency things “kids” will find “cool” in a lifestyle sort of way.
Oh and, “You’re wrong, Walter!”
Basically every phone company except Apple has insanely named products (HTC Incredible, Sensation, Evo 4G, Evo 3D, Desire HD, etc.); and Apple only avoids the problem by having one model out at a time. If Apple tried to have a dozen products at once, they’d have naming problems too.
Actually, iPhone naming is an issue for a third of the iPhone owners according to this:
The survey, by electronic shopping website Retrevo, found that 34 percent of iPhone owners mistakenly think their phones are 4G-enabled with the faster, fourth-generation (hence “4G”) service. But while AT&T and Verizon, which sell Apple’s iPhone in the United States, are working on 4G networks, they’re not fully in place yet. Nor does the iPhone have high-speed 4G connectivity. And the next may not, either.
“Maybe the ‘4’ in the iPhone 4 name gives iPhone owners the false impression that they already own a 4G phone,” said Andrew Eisner, Retrevo’s director of community and content.
But only RIM had such a dominance in the market that their names mattered. For a while it looked like there was no way they could fail, every business guy had one. So people knew their products. When you get to HTC etc, people at Bestbuy aren’t buying phones they are buying features - the names are meaningless.
The names aren’t the only thing but also show how they looked at their own brands. They had no unifying phone to rally around or clarity on their products. When the iphone appeared they needed to be able to say - Don’t buy the iphone - instead buy the… um… torch? curve? bold? blunt? kill me.
Added bonus how do i know they are the worst phone names ever? Because RIM picked them.
We’ve had a sunset policy on Blackberry phones in house for over a year now, and the ones left are slowly rolling off contracts. From talking to my other buddies in IT scattered here and there, this is not uncommon right now. The cost of additional server/license/support and the lack of an over-the-top distinguishing feature in anything they now have has killed them.
iPhones and Android based phones were the key to the downfall, but the lack of RIM staying on top of their game added to it greatly.
I don’t know. Right now I travel about 40% of the time, and neither Apple nor Android seem to be able to replace the Blackberry, as much as I hate it.
This sentence, and the position that you’re doggedly sticking to, makes no sense. Seriously, just back away.
You are saying that RIM did not have a dominance in their market? In that case, back away I will…
BBs still have the best security, that’s not a concern for IT? iPhones and Androids are sending those emails out as plain text and people can eavesdrop on them easily.
No, I’m saying you’re crazy and stubborn. Dominance in the market does not magically make names matter. Similarly, it does not make non-sensical naming an abnormality.
crazy person: “The sun rises in the east so that fairies can frolick!”
non-crazy person: “That’s crazy talk.”
crazy person: “Are you saying the sun doesn’t rise in the east?!”
Maybe he meant “inane.”