[Maktab]

Anecdotally, RIM has been making significant inroads amongst the smartphone-buying youth in South Africa by heavily advertising BBN and offering discounted models. Whether this will prove sticky enough in the end and whether it's applicable elsewhere are open questions, but every single one of the sub-25 year olds I know who had the choice of getting a premium phone opted for a Blackberry instead of an iPhone or Android device, and they did it purely because of BBN.

[Stormbringer]

I agree. As an outsider it seems odd to think that their best two markets are CEOs and teens. Kind of like the game "which one of these is not like the other". I think the common link is that both of these groups have a heavy emphasis on what I'll call "high availability communicating".

I can offer some more anecdotal evidence about the outrageous prices of SMS driving market behaviour... I was in NZ for a while when Vodafone (?) had a free text to other Vodafones in the weekend deal. _Nobody_ I knew had a Telecom (the main competitor) phone unless they actually worked for Telecom.

So we might say "okay, just specialise in texting"... but I think the other trend driving smartphones is convergence. I went looking to buy an iPhone the other day, but they are all sold out in my area. So instead, I bought an iPod Touch and am using a beat up old Nokia - but it annoys me that I need to carry two devices.

What the iPhone bought to the table (or rather, massively accelerated - since apps were available before but not in great demand) is convergence of things that we never would have actually carried around before - like a compass, barometer (weather forecast), pocket games etc.

Another example that comes to mind: when in London I used to carry a "Pocket A to Z" guide, which is basically a book that is a high level map of the city. It was my top priority purchase on arriving in the UK. Now though I would simply use an iPhone or Android phone instead.

And it is in this area of convergence that I think RIM is falling behind and their lack of vision and bad products (storm etc) are most telling.