Everyone seems to be jumping on to the touchscreen bandwagon. Now RIM is trying to do so with its upcoming phone, Thunder. But should it?
Here's a couple of reasons why I think Thunder is a major misjudgment on RIM's part. It seems to compete directly with the Iphone abandoning one of the major components of a Blackberry...its QWERTY keyboard.
Interface
It's hard to beat a QWERTY keyboard for familiarity and ease of use. Most Blackberry users love this keyboard so the Thunder will not necessarily appeal to existing Blackberry users.
The touchscreen on the other hand is an excellent interface....if typing messages is not your primary concern. Apple has shown that a touchscreen is excellent for surfing and navigating through playlists, photos and media. Apple has got this down to an artform.
The touchscreen is not a bad thing if the Thunder was intending to be a media player/browser, but does it have any place on a Blackberry? Even with tactile feedback which seems to be a gimmick more than anything else, it's hard to imagine it being better than good old fashioned buttons.
Applications
The Iphone was always designed around the media player premise and as such its applications specifically cater for media playing. The touchscreen neatly fits into this playing an essential role in making the media player easy to control.
Furthermore, the Iphone's browser is amazing and possibly the most fully fledged browser out in the mobile market at the moment. Once again, the touch screen fits very nicely into the phone's role as a browser.
Blackberries on the other hand have traditionally been communication and e-mail devices. Only since the Curve have RIM's media players come into play and even then it's still no where close an Iphone's in terms of features and ease of use. The Blackberry platform, despite the Curve remains very commmunication and work centric with it only taking its infant steps into the media player world.
Blackberry's browser also still is firmly grounded in 'mobile browser' category with it struggling to render scripts and having all sorts of compatibility isssues with fully fledged sites. It is uncertain whether Thunder has a revamped browser.
Right now we're starting to see Thunder as being neither a very good media player and possibly not a good browser and yet it's not quite a good communications device due to its lack of a keyboard. The tactile touchscreen is starting to look like a gimmick rather than an interface that makes sense.
Branding
The Iphone has the immense branding advantage with all the goodwill of IPods and its integration with ITunes together. Apple as a brand, has been portrayed as young, creative and hip and has large succeeded in getting this message across. The Iphone is not just a phone with an Ipod. Think of it, we don't even call it a mp3 player. We call it an Ipod. Apple products are status symbols in their own right and is evidenced in the failures of competitors coming up with products that may be technically superior to Apple's and yet doesn't do well. After all, no one wants an Ipod/Iphone clone and the Thunder will find it hard to shake this off.
RIM on the other hand has a reputation of making reliable, minimalistic, robust and practical communication devices. Not a bad thing, but hardly close to being 'hip' though the Curve did manage to bring RIM out of its purely business image.
It is one thing to alter RIM's perception as a purely business image into a consumer friendly brand and another to completely reinvent itself to be 'cool'.
Demographics
If the Thunder is not a true communications device, then what is it? I can see the main target market of the Thunder as young people or mild Blackberry users that want something different. and the whole coolness of having a tactile touch screen. This largely overlaps with Apple's market who is already leaps and bounds ahead of the competition especially with its recent release of its USD199 3G Iphone.
Can Thunder match this price?
What RIM should do and what it should see as the real threat
At the end of the day, Blackberry users and IPhone users are different kinds of people. They each serve their own niches and it would be unwise for either company to seriously think of trying to gain market shares in each other's demographic.
An Iphone with its touchscreen will never beat a Blackberry in terms of sheer ease of typing something out. A Blackberry on the other hand with a keyboard and its smaller screen will find it very difficult to beat the iphone for its browsing and media capabilities. They can be decent at its other functions but sheer design dictates that they are for different purposes.
Thunder's attempt to bridge this gap just appears to be sending a scouting party into a deeply fortified warzone. Apple is light years ahead in this area, why should it compete to only be seen as a poor copy?
Instead of worrying about the Iphone, what RIM should REALLY be concerned about is Google's open source Android platform in which I will deal with in my next post.
