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Monday, January 11, 2010

The End of Brand Loyalty?


I'm from Waterloo. Rim is headquarterd down the street from where I went to highschool. Blackberry's are assembled a stones throw from where I grew up for Pete's Sake! My friends work at RIM, my friend's wives work at RIM, sh*t even my enemies work at RIM. My point is I've always supported RIM products, even when they were clunky with monocrome screens, because lets face it they are good at what they do. I wont deny that civic pride has something to do with it, because frankly it's in the best interests of Canada and Waterloo Region in particular that RIM continues to flourish - see the CIGI, The Perimeter Institute and the Balsille School of International Affairs as exhibit A, B, and C. So why now, at this critical economic juncture, am I torn between who I should choose as the manufacturer of my first touch screen phone? When the Iphone dropped I was all over it, I wanted one sooooo badly, but I waited. I know how Apple operates, and sure as day, they dropped another more advanced version within months of the original. What added to my hesitance was the insider information I had on what would later be called the Blackberry Storm. Fastforward to today and there are more options in touchscreen mobile phones than there are PC's, easily. But the one that has my eye, despite all my civic duty/pride/responsibility isn't the Storm 2, or the Iphone 3Gs, the Motorolla droid or whatever for that matter. It's the Nexus One. Why? Cuz it does everything I need and then some, and the price is right - bottom line. When it comes to electronics my people, please believe me competition is GOOD. Now, unless RIM can drop a 5 megapixel+ touch screen phone in the next couple months, i'll be replacing yet another one of my trusted tools with yet another Google product (see MS word, MS explorer, physical hardrives, hotmail, newspapers, etc, etc).

Photo courtesy of : Blackberrycool.com
A good articles on the implication of the Nexus One and the question as to whether Google actually has the ability to manufacture, market and then mobilize an international sales force (something RIM is very good at) to sell the phone, can be found at


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