I joined a stock market simulator called Investopedia about two months ago. Since then i have been following some companie’s stock indexes including Apple Inc. and RIM (research in motion) the developers of the blackberry. I bought quite a few stock of RIM and was very content to know that on the morning of September 28, 2010, my RIM stocks went up. I was fortunate that RIM has just announced the release of an Electronic Reader/Pad Gadget that offered similar features of the iPad but it had a camera. I was very surprised, it made me think, ‘” Will all the Blackberry fans lean towards this new release by RIM? I thought so, but for my surprise, very little advertising was done and very few, if not most of my friends were not aware of that release. It shocked me because “Now” seems to be the blackberry trend phase since most of my friends are blackberry users. On the other hand, as I started to think I realized that Apple has a huge advantage in the sense that they have an App Store with a greater variety of apps to chose from. It is very hard to compete with such a strong competitor. Many people may value it less by seeing it as just an imitation. And if we consider RIM’s competitive advantage, first thing that comes to mind is Blackberry messenger, which enables blackberry owners to comunicate for free as long as they have a data plan. To what extent is the Blackberry messenger useful in RIM’sPlaybook? The answer is, it is not relevant, it doesnt add much value to the Playbook consequently its popularity may be jeopardized along to its success. Well, as a RIM supporter, I really wish they come up with better features and that they are able to build up a succesful marketing mix for their product. And as a consumer, keep up with the war and keep prices lower.
