RIM has a new series of ads on buses and subways - they picture very serious people who look like they do very serious things for a living. These people glare out of their posters with their arms crossed or hands busy with something more important than anything you do. They're captioned, "I'm not interested in down time," like the rest of us who enjoy other stuff on our phones are just idiots who do nothing.
Somehow, RIM has completely missed the reason that they have been unsuccessful in the past five years. The very serious people in their ads are exactly the people that used to use Blackberry devices and made them the market leader in smartphones for years. Those people switched devices. They started bringing iPhones and Android phones into work and asking IT if they could use them. Blackberry is trying to convince the people that used to love Blackberry that they really want the same experience they had five years ago, but the reality is that the rest of the world moved on. People want personal email, games, Twitter, and Instagram on their phone, regardless of whether they use the same device for sending work emails and calendar invites.
If this is RIM's idea of focusing on the enterprise, they may as well pack it in and cash out the shareholders. When customers demand a better experience, the answer is not to double down and convince them that they misunderstand the experience that they really want. That's a losing game plan.
