It happened without us even noticing. Blackberry’s user base has shifted — from business executives to the urban poor. It happened so fast that it’s hardly been noticed in the media. RIM may not even know it themselves.
This past weekend the riots in the UK were not organized via sms, nor twitter, or facebook, but by BBM (BlackBerry Messenger). If you were to say, “a riot organized via blackberry,” you might assume it was a riot of the bankers, it happened in Argentina in 2001, but that’s not what was happening. It was the poor, the underclass, who was using blackberry.
It’s not just the UK. While the riots were happening I was in Medellín, Colombia, to give a talk on lean startups. There as well, the blackberry is the phone of choice for the urban masses. With BBM you avoid sms charges, get a nice smart messenger phone, and it’s cheap. Turns out in Colombia you have some money you get an Android, and if you’re well to do, you get an iPhone.
What happened is a while ago RIM decided to move in to the pre-paid segment. You can now get a blackberry for cheap with a flat rate data plan. Because people don’t use blackberries for streaming video or music they don’t tax the network as much.
The blackberry is becoming the new sidekick. A tight, messaging focused phone on a budget. The funny thing is, everybody’s been thinking, because RIM’s getting crushed on the high end, they’re going to go out of business. But perhaps what will happen is that they’ll replace the feature phone. Fighting with Nokia for bottom three billion.
It reminds me of a Mad Men pitch to Admiral Television about them focusing on the African American market. Their ad buys and concert sponsorship clearly shows the RIM execs intended to reach out to these markets. I updated this paragraph to make it clear i don’t think the RIM exec’s are racists.
After a decade of being the tool of choice for the upwardly mobile and a symbol of globalization, it’ll be a tough transition to tool of the masses. That said, perhaps there is a good long term market for RIM to replace feature phones with messaging phones.
Updates: Apparently in Nigeria this new segment of blackberry users are called ‘low brow’ users. They also say a lot of the phones are bought used.
Slate ran an article on Bono and the world Dorkiest Phone, and RIM has run commercials trying to reach out to youth.
16 Comments, Comment or Ping
Racist.
Unsubstantiated.
Pure.
Bullshit.
Worthless article.
August 11th, 2011
I agree with Eddie..
August 11th, 2011
I had the choice between an iphone and a blackberry and chose the blackberry, I could have afforded both.
August 11th, 2011
Interesting viewpoint, and now that I think about it, it is absolutely true from what I’ve seen. Funny how it is somehow construed as racist, simply because it involves the poor or blacks. People are such mindless sheep.
August 12th, 2011
Stupid.
Lame.
Overly opinionated.
BS.
Crap article.
Teens are buying the Blackberrys, these are still the best phones for typing and a decent alternative to touching cold glass to type.
August 12th, 2011
I don’t see race mentioned anywhere…
August 12th, 2011
Racist? Race isn’t mentioned anywhere in here Eddie you idiot.
August 11th, 2011
Surely you can’t claim that riots weren’t organized via Facebook and other forms of social media is absurd. Are you following the social media arrests what so ever? All internet-enabled mobile devices allow communication over social networks, so there goes your argument about it being exclusive to BB.
You’re making the argument that RIM is marketing to the urban poor solely because texting is cheaper. And thus, riots are being organized with it. Definitely unconvinced by your line of reasoning there. Poorly substantiated argument.
August 11th, 2011
Wrong answer. The reason why most of the urban poor looters use blackberry is because most of them are black. Black kids like blackberry because it was Obama’s favorite phone. And it’s natural for these black looters to follow the taste of Obama.
August 11th, 2011
The AppHole EyePhone snobz love to talks sh*t.
August 11th, 2011
You know why there are less iPhones in some rural areas of the USA??? It is because AT&T doesn’t have very many or no cell towers in those areas, thus all those customers avoided iPhones because they wouldn’t work on CDMA networks. During that time, those people purchased other smartphones, like Blackberry and Android. This is so f*cking easy to understand, yet the big city snobz thought otherwise, ha ha, f*cking morons!
August 11th, 2011
A little surprised at the accusations of racism. It is now an established fact that BBM was used extensively to plan the riots in London. So I think there is a lot to what you’re saying.
The thing is ‘urban poor’ in a London or British sense is different than it would be in the US. Here it has less to do with race and more class. So you do see more mixed race gangs and groups of kids than you would in the States.
August 12th, 2011
@TK — Race is mentioned when it’s suggested the Blackberry Execs may have suggested their product be marketed towards African Americans. Yes, it’s an interesting observation to see how RIM’s market has shifted. None the less… who cares. The writing does have a slant towards being racist. Shame on you Author!
August 12th, 2011
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