The iPhone, the Blackberry and the slippery slope…

In a world where us techy folk like me enjoy sitting around and talking about how mobile is the future, and feeling encouraged by still-bleak but trumped up statistics like “42% of consumers use their mobile phones for something other than phone calls last month”, one thing we can hang on to is the outrageous success of the RIM Blackberry and the moderate success but outrageous cool-factor of the Apple iPhone. These are both heart warming tales, one of functionality, the other of usability, that point to a truly wireless future. But sadly, both are beginning to slide down a slippery slope that’s plagued commercial products since the dawn of branding.

In recent weeks and months RIM, and more recently Apple, have been diluting the niche market footholds wonderful products – each targeting their own distinct audience – as they try to be all things to all people. And I just really wish they’d stop and think about their methods before going any further.
The first step was taken by RIM when they installed a facebook icon in the factory menu of all newer model Blackberry’s, allowing the younger white collar crowd to mix a little pleasure with their business. However, this now seems to have led to the internal thinking that the Blackberry’s high-end business-ready hardware is perfectly equipped to fill the obvious void in the market for a $300 remote poking device for horny teens. As a result, we’ve been victimized by one of the worst youth-targeted commercials I’ve ever seen from Rogers Wireless, a brand which has made a reputation for its mechanical and unrealistic portrayal of teens. The RIM folks are also playing to this younger demo as they release colourful and sleeker models of the phone to appeal to a younger crowd looking for a sexy phone that can give them a satisfying media experience on the go. Hmmmm…. sounds an awful lot like the target demo for another wireless product, doesn’t it…..?
At the same time as the Blackberry been working for the weekend, the iPhone has been making news these days for shifting gears in the opposite direction. Apple has just announced it will licence and interoperate with the ActiveSync protocol allowing email and calendar functions to be pulled from Microsoft business applications – for those scoring at home, that’s the same Microsoft that Apple’s computer division has been essentially running attack ads against for the last year or so. Does anyone else see an odd philosophical conflict there?
Clearly both RIM and Apple feels there’s a huge untapped market out there for their technology (and who can blame them?) but are the really going about this the right way? To break it down to the lowest common denominator, Blackberry means business and iPhone means pleasure. Sure there’s some crossover, but those are their brands and that’s their brand identity to consumers – especially for the ones already loyal to one side. And isn’t that what growing a brand is really all about? Owning a place in your consumers minds? Which is why I can’t understand why both companies are doing everything to stretch (and there by water-down) the value of flagship brands, as opposed to creating new ones to grow markets of their own? What 17 year old kid wouldn’t find it cooler to buy a “Blueberry” in a vibrant blue colour rather than have the same model phone as their dad? What mobile business person, enticed by the sleek look of the iPhone but turned off by it’s perceived lack of productivity wouldn’t embrace a “MacPhone Pro”? Maybe my names for these new brands suck, but the point is – why wouldn’t they simply release new specialty products, capitalizing on the credibility of the current brand, without diluting that special place in their customers minds that those existing brands now own.
Instead, both the Blackberry and the iPhone are sliding down a slippery slope as they publicly develop identity crises – fortunately, they haven’t gone off the deep end just yet. But just like with a person, when a brands lose their identity they start to confuse and worry those who know them best – in Apple and RIM’s cases, their current customers. They’re now heading down a path that many major brands before them have, stretching themselves thinner to be more things to more people (ahem, Starbucks…). I just hope that Apple and RIM realize this before the biggest problem someone without their identity faces sets in – people just don’t seem to trust them so much anymore…

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