The shift towards the perception that BlackBerry makers Research In Motion are in trouble due to the onslaught of Android and iOS phones is natural, but premature. Only some time ago, BlackBerry made a serious effort to take younger users into its fold as well, and the campaign seems to have hit it off in the UK, in India, South Africa and in some other countries (that don’t include the USA).
In these countries, the new trend started with younger people getting their BlackBerrys through their seniors or parents who were buying new devices and handed their old BlackBerrys to the kids. These youth found BlackBerry messenger to be very useful and the fact that it was free was an added bonus. Despite the new-found popularity among younger users and, of course, the enterprise segment, Research In Motion is definitely having some problems due to the increasing popularity of iPhone and Android phones.
However, the growth rate of handset sales has obscured some of the company’s problems so far. The operating system is all important when it comes to smartphones, because where hardware is concerned there are only touchscreen devices and those that have QWERTY keyboards.
The BlackBerry operating system looks good but dated, and that’s why the company has come out with BlackBerry OS 7.
Research In Motion recently made a slew of announcements at the BlackBerry World event, and in addition to that, BlackBerry Messenger is its hidden social network, which has a community in everywhere, including in India, and the members of this community are not likely to trade their messengers for anything else.