Last couple of weeks, I have been amazed at the number of users who have been flashing their BlackBerries. All my friends have one – whether they are salaried or self employed – and I do understand their need to be connected on emails.
But the surprise came when I met college students using BlackBerry Bold & customer care staff upgrading from a monochrome Motorola to a BB. It seems now you can never be too far from a BB !
So what really is causing this?
- Is there a genuine need for a bigger base of users these days to be connected on emails?
- Is it that the Facebook/YM/twitter/Orkut apps run faster on BB & these users need to be connected with their “gang” on the social network
- Blackberry messenger adds up a peer pressure of sorts on those who are not on it.
- Or is it just that we have now learnt to spend more on our telecom bills. Also the handset being one of the most flashed objects you possess, the need to have a fancier gadget is more pronounced.
- The lifecycle of a handset has reduced & people need to change (& simultaneously upgrade) to a better phone & experience. I remember seeing lot of college kids carrying those touch screen ASUS phones about 1.5-2 yrs back. They must now feel the need to upgrade & probably BB handsets at 11000Rs (and Rs 200 per month) sounds like a good option to them
What also is confusing is why these users are not experimenting with Nokia Push Email. I have seen a lot of users with the ESeries phones, but most of them do NOT have their emails configured on the phone.
I feel its a mix of all these & probably much more….but my take is that the BlackBerry will soon shoot up in its market share in the urban middle class consumers. There are far too many coincidences to just ignore this.