Blackberry is losing me

Blackberry Playbook

I think I may have been one of the only people in this market – feels like the whole wide world – to buy a Blackberry Playbook (RIM’s tablet computer).

DOES ANYONE ELSE OWN ONE?  Hellooooo.

As a loyal BB person (or at least one who is stuck in a contract), I made the purchase several months ago because I was tired of being surrounded by iPads and I thought it might help at work.

It hasn’t.  I can only access emails on the tablet when tethered to my phone.  Browsing is nice, but other business related applications are cumbersome and not terribly helpful, at least for me.

Basically, I have a $500 gadget sitting at my desk at work and that’s pretty much where it stays.

I bought the Playbook from a Cincinnati Bell store several months ago.  It was the first one sold by my sales rep. and, he thought, only the second sold from their store at that time.  I asked why sales were so slow and he said RIM provide salespeople with few, if any, incentives to push it.

Obviously, a marketing blunder.

Of course, we all know Blackberry (RIM) has had many problems.  National data (ComScore) indicates that their market share in smartphones in the U.S. is plummeting.  Not sure that I care that they are growing in India because I am a user, not a shareholder.

So I read Saturday in the WSJ that RIM is taking a $500 million write-off for unsold or discounted Playbooks.  What I paid $500+ for a couple of months ago is now selling for $199.  Ouch!  I feel even more like a knucklehead.

We’ll release in the next day or so our (Vehr Communications) 2011 Social Media Usage Survey results.  In a smartphone market once dominated by BB, it now generally shares the market evenly with iPhone and Android.  iPhone stayed about the same as 2010, but Droids soared and BB cratered.

85% of respondents who used tablets had iPads.  One lonely, sorry-@$$ sucker respondent said he used the RIM Playbook.  Yeah … guess who?!

Blackberry is losing me.  May be shopping for an iPhone or Droid.  How about you?