On Research in Motion’s Q3 Fiscal 2012 earnings call, co-CEO Mike Lazaridis announced that BlackBerry 10 smartphones would be delayed until late 2012 because the company is waiting on new dual-core, dual-mode, LTE chipsets that won’t become available until mid 2012.
Yesterday, however, BGR released an exclusive report citing a high-ranking RIM employee claiming that BlackBerry 10 devices aren’t delayed because RIM is waiting on a new chipset, but, because BlackBerry 10 devices don’t work.
Research in Motion responded in an official statement stating that the anonymous claims are inaccurate and uninformed reiterating that the delay is due to chipset availability and any suggestion to the contrary is simply false.
Honestly, does it really matter why BlackBerry 10 is delayed?
The sad state for Research in Motion is that they company had to immediately respond to the BGR report because it, even if improbable, sounds awfully plausible. The fact of the matter is that Research in Motion won’t offer a smartphone on par with the iPhone 3G or Android 2.0 until late next year.
Consumers won’t care if the delay is because RIM is waiting for processors to power their phones that don’t yet exist or if the prototypes RIM are working on don’t actually work. What they do care about is being able to get a phone that doesn’t seem inferior to the one next to it on the display shelf, and, sadly, this will be the case for RIM until at least late next year.
After readings RIM’s response, I kind of came to the same conclusion. Why does it really matter why BBX is delayed? My plan came up in Nov. but I was going to hold off to get a BBX phone in February. Now, I just asked SantaWife to get me a Droid Nexus for Christmas and I did that before the BGR report came out so it is like RIM refuting it would have mad a difference.
No, It really doesn’t matter. As consumers continue to buy iPhones, Android phones, and WP7 phones instead of BlackBerry devices, the last thing they are thinking about is why the BlackBerry still hasn’t caught up. They just know that it hasn’t and buy something else.
Delayed or not, BGR often reports stories from unnamed 3rd party sources which should always be taken with a grain of salt anyway, no matter if its Apple, RIM or Android as subject
BGR’s report is boarderline at best. I’ve watched TMZ, have you?
RIM has already lost the consumer market in the US. By the time BBOS 10 comes out, no one will care unless they basically give the device away. Even then I see no way back for them.