Gadgetory

nowhere do legendary brands arise and depart like in the tech world go big or go home that was invented here and go home means go home and turn off the lights so how does research in motion avoid sitting in the dark I'm Brian Cooley with the top five things the blackberry has to accomplish in 2012 to stay irrelevant number five ignite developer support you've got to get devs excited welcome whatever app they write even if it's stupid assign an army to support them give them great development tools feed them lunch whatever it takes but users increasingly see a phone as the apps it runs and a lot of them don't even know blackberries have apps number four get blackberry 10 the new operating system out the door this new BlackBerry OS will be based on kunis which is a very serious OS we've seen it running on the playbook for example and it smokes but bb10 was recently bumped to second half of 2012 that means iphone 5 and 378 new android phones will have come out by then sporting relentlessly updated software blackberry could be forgotten by late-2012 if they don't do something number 3 whittle down the product line we basically need a curve for the cheapskates bold for Bob business and something cool for the rest of us which you don't make yet and anything with a four-digit number as part of its model name that's a red flag the engineers are making the product team they're bitches number to get the message clear and get it out there with iOS and Android now the established momentum leaders BlackBerry has to drop back narrow its focus and cut through the noise email security and keyboard that used to be the big rubric but that doesn't cut it anymore horizons have broadened and those things are just basically features now not a platform IT departments are increasingly letting us use our iPhone or Android to connect to company resources so that all vaunted blackberry back in has to take its place alongside a broader set of goodies before I take you to the number one thing that has to happen on the black someone has to get forced in hinds some meth the new CEO of rim all to calmly explains that the company just needs a nip and tuck here and there if we continue doing well what we're doing I see no problems of us being in the top three players worldwide the next year's and wireless that's like saying Keith Richards looks pretty good just needs a little powder we need some frenetic urgency up in Waterloo the number one thing that reham has to do is sell lust they should have made Hannibal Lecter their CEO now I think about it he had it right when he said we covet what we see Clarice you see much consumer lust for smartphones still starts with the actual phone even before the OS the apps in the carrier come to mind there has to be something shiny and cool the rest of the industry hasn't thought of now you can't hire Jonathan Ive away from Apple but maybe you could kidnap him for a full list of 10 things rim needs to do in 2012 check out Maggie Reardon's great piece over at cnet news and for more top 5s like this head over to top 5 cnet com I'm Brian Cooley thanks for watching