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It’s official, the BlackBerry is no longer cool, according to the Los Angeles Times.
While the line of devices has been slipping in prominence steadily since the iPhone was introduced and an army of Droids followed, the paper has declared BlackBerrys official no longer reasonably acceptable as a status smartphone. The LAT spoke to several disgruntled BlackBerry users who bemoaned the fact they have to make do with the once cutting edge but no longer relevant brand’s phones:
“I’m like that old lady driving an Oldsmobile in a parking lot when everyone else is driving BMWs,” said Jesica Ryzenberg, 32, a BlackBerry owner in San Francisco.
Analysts were similarly circumspect about the stylishness and cachet of BlackBerry devices:
“Clearly the market has moved on,” said Chris Jones, principal analyst at research firm Canalys. “From applications to multimedia to the quality of the cameras to the quality of the browsing experience, it’s lacking in all of those areas, plus more.”
In the past few years, market share for BlackBerry devices has dropped from 43% to 19% in the smartphone genre. However, Rick Costanzo, GM of RIM’s Americas division said that BlackBerry is in the “very early, early stages of a huge global transition,” and added that “[the] game is far from over” and that “[RIM’s] challenge is to educate the marketplace.”
