The "BlackBerry Era" faces an end to the challenge

The shares of RIM, the BlackBerry handset maker, fell 21% sharply this month 17th, causing concern.　　Analysts say the price plunge is due to the company's adverse performance in launching new products and its inferior position in the competition with Apple and Google, the "BlackBerry era" facing an end to the challenge. Rim is a victim of fierce competition in the smartphone industry, analysts say, and should readjust its mindset, try to figure out the mentality of customers and compete with rivals with new products. The decline in the BlackBerry's share of the smartphone market in the US fully reflects this change in the market. The market share of BlackBerry handsets fell to 41% in the first quarter from 55% in the same period last year, according to Gartner, a marketing research firm.　　The total share of Apple's iphone and Android handsets rose from 23% a year earlier to 49%. Professionals believe that the mobile phone market is changing fast, and rim faces the biggest problem is that there is no new product launch. RIM has been out of new products since August 2010, and there are too few apps available for BlackBerry to compete with software for Apple handsets or Android phones. The common problem for smartphone developers is the lack of application software, and rim is not active in software innovation. The survey shows that when users lose interest in "BlackBerry" handsets, they turn to Android as the operating system.　　Android phones are also equipped with a standard keyboard, with a wide variety of applications, more stable browsers and high-quality cameras than BlackBerry handsets. The iphone's iOS system has also taken away many users of BlackBerry handsets. Apple's upcoming imessage software, which mimics the capabilities of the BlackBerry, allows unlimited text messages to be sent between users of the iOS platform. The launch of the software may be the biggest challenge for BlackBerry handsets. With the loss of mobile phone users, RIM's Tablet PC is struggling to compete with Apple's ipad. The BlackBerry Playbook tablet uses a different QNX operating system than the BlackBerry handset, allowing program developers to start from scratch and not take full advantage of the tens of thousands of application resources available from App World, the BlackBerry.　　This makes playbook's application significantly behind the ipad. The company has no plans to replace the system this year, according to RIM's 2011 BlackBerry Development Program. If the fall in share prices is the result of Apple and Google encroaching on Rim's market for quite some time, rim is at the point of considering the game.　　The company has announced that it will upgrade its BlackBerry bold and torch two handsets by the summer of this year. (Xinhua News Agency, Toronto, June 20)