Ampers & Dot

The title introduces this post pretty well, but let’s set it up a little more…

Last week Verizon finally (after multiple delays) released the brand new Blackberry Storm. The Storm is the keyboardless touchscreen iPhone competitor-du-jour, manufactured by RIM. Longly anticipated by Blackberry fanatics, the Storm is an entirely new form-factor for the traditionally business focused smartphone, giving even the stuffiest suit wearers an opportunity to swipe a finger across their phone’s screen and make a “woosh” sound… unfortunately that novelty wears off very quickly and the troubled functionality remains.

Initial usability reviews have been relatively mixed, from “useless” to “frustrating“, but the most telling review is from The Boy Genius - one of the bigger Blackberry enthusiasts out there - who spent over 6,500 words trying to justify the Storm, only to conclude that it “is the best phone to ever touch Verizon Wireless so far” but…

“We wouldn’t trade our Bolds in for Storms if you paid us. Like a lot of money. Like, six figures. It’s not that the Storm is a piece of junk for the most part, it’s that it goes against everything a BlackBerry stands for… Quick. Easy. Effortless. The touch screen on the Storm complicates the simplest of tasks sometimes, you lose that lightning fast BlackBerry crack-addict mentality, at least to us.”

And as much as that is just a jab at Verizon’s phone offerings, the biggest point to all of this is that the Storm is a misfit. It might be positioned as a competitor to the iPhone, but it’s no competition to any other Blackberry.

Problematically, this is RIM’s first touchscreen device. This is RIM’s first keyboardless device. The first Blackberry in two years without the Pearl nav wheel, or about five years without a clickwheel. This is the first Blackberry ever that wasn’t first and foremost about function. And this will be the least successful Blackberry yet.

I’ve always been an advocate (not user) of Blackberries because they are just incredibly utilitarian. Completely functional email devices built for business use but also sleek and gadgetastic enough to enjoy playing with. Although the Storm certainly ranks perfectly on its gadgety-goodness, it lost the inherent usability of a Blackberry.

So now let’s get back to the comparison: A McDonald’s Veggie Burger. McDonald’s is presumably awesome at cranking out cheap burgers, cholesterol packed fries, and soft-drinks big enough to drown in. The fast-food powerhouse caters to people who want cheap, quick, and tasty burgers. You don’t head to McDonald’s in search of a healthy snack - that’s just not what they do.

But why not? RIM saw that there was a market for touchscreen devices and wanted to take a piece of that pie with the Storm. McDonald’s knows there are people out there who don’t eat burgers, why not market to them too? Well, actually I have a real answer for you.

Taken from McDonald’s Q&A page:

Q: Why doesn’t McDonald’s offer a veggie burger on its national menu?
A: After testing several types of veggie burgers in different parts of the country, we’ve chosen not to offer one on our national menu at this time. We’ll continue to look at these options and make decisions based on good business sense from a customer interest and sales perspective. Ultimately, however, it’s our customers who choose what’s on our menu. We’ll continue to offer those menu items that are most popular with a majority of our customers.

It’s just not the burger-marker’s sweet spot. “Good business sense” either means that they just can’t make a cheap veggie burger that isn’t disgusting and that people will actaully buy or it means that people just don’t go to McDonald’s for healthy food. Similarly, “good business sense’ is that either RIM can’t make a great touchscreen device or its customers don’t want it.

Maybe I’m wrong and maybe the next iteration of the Blackberry Storm will work out the kinks and be an awesome device. Or maybe in a year or two RIM will go back to its roots and keep producing the best business devices on the market that work well, and instead make a Q&A section on its website with the question: “Why doesn’t RIM offer a Touchscreen device?”…