New Blackberry #Technology: Lessons in Maintaining Market Share

Following on from the success of the BBM app, RIM announces free Wi-Fi calls, but is this another Apple like case of too little too late?

The Skype like BBM Voice enables these Wi-Fi calls between Blackberry customers, encouraging brand loyalty, and making it more difficult for businesses to break from the service ahead of the Blackberry 10 launch in 2013.

However, RIM still lacks the video functionality of Face Time, Skype or Google+, and with it not likely to be seen in the Blackberry 10 OS, this clearly may not be enough to hold onto market share, never mind grow it.

Unfortunately, this is a trend we have also been seeing with Apple's latest product launches, which has seen the Jobless giant drop to just 5.5% share of global mobile phone business.

Clearly RIM has a long way to go to show it is still a serious player and can last, but this lesson doesn't just apply to phone companies either. Freephone numbers are going to become increasingly important as businesses and consumers get more used to free calls and expect them. More importantly this all shows that just trying to maintain position and market share doesn't work. You have to be moving way ahead of the competition or your organization will fade each day.

Forget focusing on catching up with the competition and replicating what they are doing today. Forget what they are rumored to be releasing in six months. How can you beat that?

Not sure where the competition is going or what consumers really want the most, and will fork over real dollars for? Check out our recent blog post on Hot Apps and Tactics for Competitive Research and Lead Generation here.