Crackberry.

I have one, some of my colleagues have one but more of my colleagues and friends have smart phones. Let me start out by saying I had an iPhone in my previous role and still long for the caress of finger touch control, so if you detect some bias, it's there. A lot of recent articles in the online communities like Mashable, Techcrunch and other such prophetic forums have come out with stories on the demise of RIM Blackberries. A demise fueled by the increase in demand for smart phones, more intuitive operating systems by Android and Apple and people wanting to enjoy their hand held experience. Quick, get your mind back on the article and out of the gutter.

What I mean about the last point above, refers to the new lifestyle where the lines of work and play are so blurred by technology that if you must play that game, then at least it should be fun, interactive and engaging. None of those adjectives would be used to describe Blackberries. RIM is losing market share to the smart phones for many reasons but most of them collide at the intersection of fun and usability. Phones are less about business applications and more about life applications and RIM is unfortunately, steadfastly holding onto the business side.

Sure the email side was always the support pier for Blackberries but everyone caught up and emails seem the least obvious choice for choosing phones nowadays. Having tens of thousands of apps on a Blackberry is not like having hundreds of thousands of apps on a smart phone and that is likely to be a tipping point for many when it comes to choosing phones. App envy could be the cause of death for an entire company that wasn't as smart as the guys who called themselves smart. If only Blackberry had called themselves a smart phone at the beginning the rest would now have to come up with an even better description for themselves.

Unfortunately that didn't happen and they now find themselves in a marketing death spiral where anything they launch is likely already available via an app. Blackberry BBM has just been supplanted by Apple iMessage, Blackberry stock has fallen by 37% in the last six months and Wall Street analysts are calling for the resignation of the RIM CEO. All three of the above have happened in recent times and such an avalanche of discontent can damage a brand beyond repair.

A Crowd Science study found that along with Blackberry users losing faith, they are looking for alternatives with 40% indicating they would make the switch to Apple OS and Google Android smart phones. Both giants have customer loyalty usually reserved for football teams, with 92% of Apple customers and 87% of Android customers staying loyal to their phones.

When talking about the last decade of technology change, RIM will have a place among the innovators but the defining label for success will be kept for those that kept innovating. In technology, to stop is to die. RIP RIM.