For RIM, there’s just no relief in sight. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) announced it will drop BlackBerry smartphones over device failure and it will choose Apple’s iPhone 5 instead.
NTSB’s decision to stop using BlackBerry devices is just the last big blow to RIM, a company that continues to literally plunge from grace. The competition looks better and better, and the latest complaints about its devices are only making things worse since the NTSB argued they are dropping BlackBerry because they need “effective, reliable and stable” devices.
For the most part, BlackBerry smartphone were seen as out of touch with today’s smartphone market, as developers weren’t exactly trying their best for the best apps. Interest for these devices plummeted even faster as the competition kept releasing touchscreen smartphones with state-of-the-art systems.
The NTSB argued BlackBerry phones “have been failing both at inopportune times and at an unacceptable rate”. The independent federal agency says it needs “effective, reliable and stable communication capabilities to carry-out its primary investigative mission and to ensure employee safety in remote locations”. So, the agency has decided Apple’s iPhone 5 is the better alternative.
This isn’t the end of world for RIM. It had already begun for months now. Plus, the NTSB isn’t the first big agency that drops BlackBerry in favor of Apple’s new iPhone. The U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement used BlackBerry phones for eight years, but last month it announced 17,600 employees will be switched from RIM devices to iPhone.
In the meanwhile, RIM CEO’s Thorsten Heins says things will change. “We owned the mistakes we made. We took responsibility and changed stuff” he told Wired.com. “We looked at management structure and figured out they were way over-managed. We removed the unnecessary committees and management by consensus” he added.
The RIM CEO added that BlackBerry 10 has received the Federal Information Processing Standard publication 140-2 certification that makes the devices safe for government use in US and Canada. “That’s where I want to be number one. That doesn’t mean I’m giving up on smartphones and tablets. They’re an element of my future business model” he revealed.
