As a blackberry owner, I was a certified member of the ‘Not-so-cool guys in office’ group. Then should I not be thrilled with the Blackberry Playbook launch, because it’s supposed to bring the missing Pizzazz to my boring blackberried life??? Well here’s my take on the Playbook; but first a background on why and how I ended up with the ‘not so cool’s’.My experiments with 'Cool'
The first day I bought an iphone (trying to join the cool guys gang in office), I had this business dinner engagement with a lady. The moment she saw me at the restaurant, she went shades of pink and whispered, “my my ..are you HAPPY to see me or what (staring at my pants)”. I was zapped and had to quickly whisper back” I AM happy to see you, but THAT’s just an iphone in my trouser pocket”. Then the other time we had this Asian housekeeper (No, I’m not racist, so I won't state the nationality of the philipino.. :), I could never realize how a random ‘yes’ to a statement from her “I phone you tomorrow, I phone you tomorrow” could lead to a major confusion. For a month, our house remained a disaster and dusty, until she confronted me and said “you cheat me, you not give iphone to me..you always say tomorrow, tomorrow, yes yes” and I’m like whoa! I decided that the iphone and me have some karmic disconnect somewhere and a complex relationship with a fat phone was not worth it.
And the ‘not-so-cools’
I decided my fate was written long back and whatever I tried, I would always end up being part of the boring guys group in office; so I went ahead and got myself blackberry anyway (the bosses were thrilled too –email, calander, messenger, roaming number..I was tracked for life now). But to be honest I find the average blackberry user also a weird and sometimes rude species. Haven’t you noticed they always hold the berry cupped in their palm, in a meeting they listen to what you’re saying and then compare what you’ve just said with something that’s written on the blackberry ; and without looking at your face they just reply back ‘ yeah yeah’ and keep fiddling with the blackberry.
So finally what is my identity now– not-so-cool, grey suited, boring, borderline geek and happy blackberry user; feels good that there are now over 50Mn of us in the world!
3 reasons why the Blackberry Playbook won’t take off
1) What’s in a name, sometimes everything
What’s with fruit names and tech devices anyway. Apple, Blackberry,…I dread the day some tech geek comes out with a brainwave and invents a mobile communicator which becomes an inseparable part of my life and to further torture me he names it a ‘Banana; and I still end up buying it.
Coming back to the Playbook, We’re the ‘not so cools’, and we’re not supposed to be carrying anything that even remotely suggests that we use our gadgets to play around in office. Then why is this called playbook, and why is it not called the workbook. I’d bet 6 out of 10 blackberries around the world have been sponsored by a corporate. How would it sound if you go to the CEO for an approval for 15 ‘Play’books for your team. Chances are that the CEO (struggling with red ink all over his desk), would probably call his HR manager to do a employee productivity review.
2) Missing Pebblekeys
The blackberry caught on because of the enormous amount of fat fingered guys like me in the world. Do you know there was a phone launch called the Blackberry Storm? It's highly likely that you don’t know about it, and why is that? The Blackberry Storm does not have any keys to punch on and is a full touch phone. As expected, in a hurried way, RIM released another product called calling it the Blackberry Torch. The major difference - They took the Storm and fixed a sliding keypad below the Storm and gave us back the pebble keys. I looked around for a sliding keypad somewhere in the Playbook and couldn’t see one. I’d wait for a sliding keypad to be put in very soon in the playbook before I spend money on it.
3) Diluting the core Product Positioning
On the website it says the playbook is great for gaming and media and in the same breath it says it’s a CIO’s delight(mail exchange server etc.). I mean, have the RIM guys lost it, that’s like tomorrow ‘ Emirates Bank saying ‘we’re not just a great commercial bank, but soon we’ll also be a great grocery store chain’. Just because you built a gadget with monster processing speeds (The Cortex A9-based, dual-core 1GHz CPU is on par/slightly ahead of iPAD’s 1Ghz A4 processor) does not mean, you move so far away from your strongest selling point that we dont recognize you anymore. There’s an identity crisis here and even RIM is not able to figure out if the playbook is supposed to be a testosterone deficient boring officey gadget or a red bull drinking hip hopper's accessory
Let's wait and watch...
