RIM -v- Nokia: The Loser's Cup - Racing to fail

That explosion you just heard was the sonic boom of two titans in the wireless industry crashing down in flames to their firey demise.

Nokia v Rim (Blackberry) - It isn't a question of who is going to win or lose, the question is who is going to lose fastest, and worst. Shocking isn't it? The perfect storm of bad timing, and poor vision.

Neither Nokia nor Rim are competing against each other, they have much bigger problems to worry about... like Apple iOS and Android.

The feature phone market has imploded, and smart phone markets soar. Nokia is hemorrhaging market share, in both. Once the king of feature phones / phone first devices, Nokia, is in a triple lose situation. No one wants a boring old style flip phone that is mainly just a phone anymore, they want the Apple iPhone type of smartphone.

Nokia does make smartphones, but their phones are based on the very aged and relatively antiquated Symbian operating system. The Symbian platform is the successor to Symbian OS and Nokia Series 60; unlike Symbian OS, which needed an additional user interface system, Symbian includes a user interface component based on S60 5th Edition. The latest version, Symbian^3, was officially released in Q4 2010, first used in the Nokia N8. Symbian OS was originally developed by Symbian Ltd. It is a descendant of Psion's EPOC, and runs exclusively on ARM processors, although an unreleased x86 port existed.

Nokia was in the perfect position, massive market share, there were more Symbian devices in use worldwide than any other operating system.


Symbian and Android are both open source operating systems, but due to a lack of savvy marketing, Symbian could have been what Android is today.


Android is signing handset makers at breakneck speed, while Symbian only has Nokia. You can't modify Symbian installed on your Nokia phone, but Android you can. Android is also sleek, easy to use, has a youthful "cool" brand... Symbian... feh.
For these reasons, Android is beating Symbian.


If all that wasn't enough, the recent deal between Nokia and Microsoft puts all the risk in Nokia's lap. If Nokia succeeds, Microsoft succeeds. If Nokia fails, Microsoft just walks away unscathed. Worse yet, the deal is good news for Android.

As Nokia phases out Symbian and moves to Windows Mobile, it will reduce Nokia's market share significantly, adding to the burn.

 As for RIM (Blackberry), they have some real problems, but not as serious as Nokia. The main problems for RIM, is of course Android, but more so, Apple, as well as another surprise, RIM.


Apple is Rim's biggest threat, that's no surprise to anyone, but what may be overlooked, RIM is RIM's own problem. They can't seem to get out of their own way. Another year has passed, the current Blackberry product lineup is getting very stale, and RIM has failed to produce a breakthrough touchscreen device that can compete.

RIM is several quarters late in introducing its new handsets based on its 7.0 operating system. For every day that passes until the new BlackBerry models become available, RIM is losing sales. This is all quite troubling because RIM doesn't seem to be in any hurry to correct things. They don't seem realize the threats are as great as they are.


I would love to hear your thoughts and comments.