RIM/Blackberry embracing insanity in its final waning days.

[onehandle]

Yes. Lame Saturday morning cartoon characters will save them.



You’ve got to hand it to RIM. The company has been through the wringer over the past year. Some loyal users have departed to other manufacturers, their stock price has fallen (currently at $17.02/share), and recently their co-CEOs stepped down. With all this said, RIM has no debt and plenty of cash in the bank, over 75 million subscribers and a new CEO who hopefully has a solid plan. It’s known that the company wants to attract a new consumer-focused audience. Thorsten Heins, RIM’s new CEO, plans to hire a new CMO and it seems like the new marketing efforts have already started. The “Be Bold” initiative kicked off on New Years, but the cartoon characters are new. There are four of them:

GoGo Girl, The Achiever: “Saving the day with a brilliant strategy”
Justin Steele, The Advocate: “Always ready to stick up for his friends”
Trudy Foreal, The Authentic: “Not afraid to call it as she sees it”.
Max Stone, The Adventurer: “Able to jump out of a plane…” (would have been good for those two drunk RIM employees)

http://mobilesyrup.com/2012/01/30/rim-creates-4-cartoon-characters-to-spread-the-be-bold-message

[TheWraith]

1. Yeah, it's a death spiral.

The fact is RIM never really had anything going for themselves except doing mobile messaging really well. They ate lunch off that forever until Apple and Google came around and showed people what a smartphone really could be, and RIM has basically been thrown out of the consumer market ever since, along with a steadily sliding hold on the business market.

[tabbycat31]

2. I'm counting the days until I can replace my blackberry

I loved it when I first bought it, but never used the BBM (why use it when you have unlimited texting, which is essentially the same thing).

Android, here I come.