An article posted about Thorsten Heins on November 15th talks about why he took the job of RIM CEO and what BlackBerry 10 brings to the table. But my question to RIM is, where’s the innovation?

For a long time, up to about 2010, RIM was a leader in the smartphone world. The BlackBerry device had a few distinguished points of difference which set them apart from the likes of Apple, Google, and Nokia. Namely, BlackBerry was known to provide a true push e-mail experience, instant messaging through BlackBerry Messenger, and overall security of information.

Fast forward to 2012, BlackBerries still have those capabilities. They’ve been improved, too. But that’s where the innovation has halted. Apple now offers an instant messaging service of it’s own to users, which has been popular amongst iOS users. Google offers push email service to Android users. Essentially, the competition not only caught up to RIM (rather easily, I should add), but far surpassed them. Desktop-like browsing and media playback has become a staple in the smartphone world. RIM is the company that has to play catch up now. They lack a point of difference from competitors, and are even struggling to find little points of parity with Apple and Samsung. Come January, we’ll see how BlackBerry 10 shifts this, if at all.