RIM needed a BlackBerry miracle. Its market and value share are being slowly eaten up by the iPhone and Android. The BlackBerry Torch should have been that miracle, but alas it has failed to make waves and initial sales seem to indicate slow-but-maybe-not-steady sales.
According to analysts at Goldman Sachs, who called the sales “underwhelming,” the Torch certainly didn’t set any sales records on fire:
The firm noted that nearly all of the stores they called did not sell out of the device. Also the checks showed that the vast majority of Torch sales were driven by upgrades from existing BlackBerry subscribers.
So what we can glean from this is that there weren’t a whole lot of people who were switching carriers or devices in order to hop onto the BlackBerry bandwagon. Instead, it appears that the device has appealed mostly to existing BlackBerry users who were looking for a nice–albeit not very major–upgrade.
If RIM expects to stay competitive, the rumored BlackPad tablet is going to have to knock some socks off, and any future devices are going to have to really compete with HTC, Motorola and Apple in terms of what customers are looking for. Slow processors, low resolution screens and clunky interfaces just aren’t going to cut it anymore.
Reviews of both OS 6 and the Torch itself were mixed, if not mostly blase. The device offers nothing to users who have seen behemoths like the HTC EVO 4G or the Motorola droid X, and its screen resolution is laughable compared to the Motorola Droid (854 x 480) or the iPhone’s retina display (960 x 640). The operating system itself, while bringing much needed features like streamlined social networking integration, has been called cluttered and clunky by many reviewers.
At this point, it would seem that the only sensible way to drive sales is to either lower the cost of the handset or offer early upgrade options for customers who want the BlackBerry Torch. Or both.
If you’re interested in picking up a BlackBerry Torch, be sure to check out our full review here.
[Via: Know Your Cell]