BlackBerry 10 is going to turn everything around for RIM. It’s going to propel the beleaguered smartphone manufacturer back into relevancy. At least, that the story that RIM’s executives would have you believe. The truth is that we don’t know exactly how the market is going to react to the launch of BlackBerry 10 early next year. One analyst isn’t too optimistic.
Bloomberg reports that James Faucette, a Pacific Crest analyst, has weighed on the potential of BlackBerry 10. He expects “the new OS to be met with a lukewarm response at best and ultimately likely to fail.” In short, he believes BB10 will be DOA.
Despite the doom and gloom, RIM isn’t doing that bad these days. The company is still posting losses, but its second-quarter losses weren’t nearly as bad as analysts had predicted. The reduced losses coupled with RIM already testing BB10 with carriers has some analysts cautiously optimistic.
Two firms – Cormack Securities and Scotia Capital – have raised their respective ratings on RIM’s stock. Paradigm Capital’s Gabriel Leung also came to the company’s defense by saying that RIM has “significantly improved its ability to attract developers to build apps for the BB10 ecosystem, which we view as a key catalyst for success.”
So, who’s right in all of this? We can’t know for sure until it launches, but it is highly unlikely that RIM will be able to capture a large chunk of the market. That’s not to say BB10 will be a failure. It could do very well and help turn RIM’s fortunes around. The company just shouldn’t be looking to take on iOS and Android. At best, RIM should settle for a decent, instead of distant, third place position.
If all else fails, RIM can license the BB10 software to third-party OEMs. Samsung could probably cook up a nice BB10 handset that would sell well enough.