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Let’s be clear about this. I love my BlackBerry for the reasons that many others love it. Its QWERTY keyboard is perfect for me, as it’s familiar to my laptop-fashioned mental schema. Also the surface of its keys fit my thumbs very well, so I can tap a message quickly and accurately. I like the range of messaging options available to me, from BB Messenger (BBM), to WhatsApp and Google Talk, and of course to the commonplace SMS and e-mail. Oh, yeah, I really like the LED, and I check my BB often for its blinking red light, as if it were some kind of fix for an addict (lol)!
Still, I’m not hopeful about the BB, and as Roger Cheng advises in his article, my next mobile device will be an iPad2 and either an iPhone or an Android-operated smartphone. Why? Well, for reasons that have to do more with Research in Motion (RIM), the BB maker, rather than the BB per se.
You see, I bought my (first and only) BB in July 2010. Friends had been asking for my BB PIN, and I was embarrassed not to have one. But in less than a month, there was an uproar about the United Arab Emirates, where I live, threatening to block BBM services. Saudi Arabia and India made similar threats to RIM, unless it allowed these countries access to its BBM data. They cited security concerns. This issue was intriguing in and of itself, but that’s another story. What I learned about RIM, with just a bit of research, was how UN-innovative it was and how late-to-the-party it was. The Torch was coming out about that time, and RIM was touting its touch screen and sliding keyboard. Whoop-de-doo (haha) ;P Been there, done that. It was so first-decade-of-the-21st-century.
Reports were that about 500,000 BBM users were in the UAE at that time. So I expressly reassured my friends that the UAE was unlikely to actually block BBM. But I also posted on Facebook that BB was on the royal road to extinction. What Apple does, what Google does … well, that excites me, both as a consumer and as a businessman.
I love my BB, as I said, but my love for it has waned steadily over the past year. I gathered that RIM was in a panic mode about how to regain its market share. Well, that’s understandable, but panic in the high stakes business of mobile devices is not exactly a confidence-booster in the marketplace, is it.
Unfortunate negative association
Rioting must be as old as humankind itself, and it’s no less tragic when it happens now. It inflames emotion, to say the least. One friend on Facebook, for example, described the rioters in the UK as a “bunch of pathetic wastes of space.” Another friend is sick and tired of hearing all the feeble excuses for their rioting.
A Bloomberg article noted that many of the rioters organized themselves on the BlackBerry Messenger. As one marketing director suggested, the association between this unrest and BB was another negative hit for an already panicked Research in Motion, the maker of BB. You see, RIM is rapidly losing market share to Apple and other mobile makers using the Android operating system.
Well, it’s a bit of irony for RIM, isn’t it, that so many of these young people in the UK seem to have taken up the BB. Good for its market share, no?
The most unfortunate irony for me, however, is this negative association. For a UK Parlaiment member to call for a ban on BBM services is as illogical, indeed, as to blame the long-trusted (stationary) phone or the venerable handwritten letter as the cause of negative events communicated through its medium. If BBM could speak, it would harken back to that old saw, “Don’t kill me! I’m only the messenger.” It’s frankly nutty.
So it is. Such association is clearly part of human nature. It’s irresponsible, too, that Bloomberg would (initially) title this article so provocatively that it reinforces this sort of blaming: “BlackBerry Falls from Executive Suite to UK Mobs.” Alas, the editors of Bloomberg are part of that human nature.
I have noted before that under heightened emotion, in high stress situations, people can lose their sense of perspective, judgment, and logic. Put more bluntly, the smartest among us can come across as downright dumb, if subjected to sufficient degrees of pressure. Understandably, the thinking mechanisms in our brain have their limits. So, just as with any piece of machinery, these mechanisms can break down, if operated beyond its predesigned uses.
What to do, then?
All parties involved in this rioting need to find a way, of course, to calm down and regain self-control. So better judgment can prevail once again. RIM itself must grasp human nature in all of its glorious (and IN-glorious) manifestations, especially how it gets played out in groups (i.e., mobs). As Apple and Google understand rather superbly, their success is based not just on how innovative their technology is, but also on how well they grasp human thinking, emotion and behavior. How well the executives at RIM understand these, I don’t know.
It is laudable indeed that RIM, as a “good corporate citizen,” will work with authorities to help in any way that it can. But this is not enough! The company must give a firm, clear message that it does not condone the violence in the UK and that, at the same time, people ought not kill the messenger. BB is not to blame for the rioting! But as of right now, there is no such message on the RIM website.
Amidst this awful rioting, RIM has an opportunity to strengthen its position, and to do so in a sensitive but strong manner. Is it late-to-act again?
Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!
Ron Villejo, PhD
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