Am I Wrong About Blackberry Being Complacent?

I tweeted about an article from Fast Company (www.fastcompany.com) a couple of days ago that announced that RIM’s earning had jumped 68%.  The article suggested that maybe we should all “get off Blackberry’s back.”  The public has continued buying of its products–seemingly contradicting the techno pundits and, of course, throws into question my last post that accuses RIM of being complacent.  I don’t mind being wrong and so I did some more investigating by going to RIM’s website to read their earnings press release.  Here are the highlights (snapshots from the website release http://press.rim.com):

• Revenue grew 31% over the same quarter last year to $4.62 billion
• Earnings per share in the second quarter increased 76% to $1.46 over the second quarter last year
• BlackBerry® smartphone shipments grew more than 45% over the same quarter last year to 12.1 million and RIM has shipped approximately 115 million BlackBerry smartphones to date
• BlackBerry subscriber account base grew approximately 56% over the prior year to over 50 million

Q2 Results:
Revenue for the second quarter of fiscal 2011 was $4.62 billion, up 9% from $4.24 billion in the previous quarter and up 31% from $3.53 billion in the same quarter of last year. The revenue breakdown for the quarter was approximately 79% for devices, 17% for service, 1% for software and 3% for other revenue. During the quarter, RIM shipped approximately 12.1 million devices.

Approximately 4.5 million net new BlackBerry® subscriber accounts were added in the quarter. At the end of the quarter, the total BlackBerry® subscriber account base was over 50 million.

Besides the fact that I could not foot back to Fast Company’s 68% growth headline, it is not clear to me to whom RIM is “shipping” its devices too.  Is it Wall Street (RIM’s traditional bread and butter)? A new set of consumers under 40?  According to RIM’s press releases their growth is occurring internationally, and in more remote and/or underdeveloped regions (http://press.rim.com/).  So it’s not Wall Street, and RIM is certainly not bragging about all the new and cool things you can do with the Blackberry!  So the 1% revenue growth for software really caught my eye.  Then I went to the press sections of both Apple and Android.  All you see are announcements about new and upcoming software applications (like Apple’s Wi-Fi upcoming printing capability) – which is an entirely different story than RIM and still leaves me wondering if RIM has become complacent.  I believe the future of the mobile device is all about the software applications and the ease of access and intuitive use.  RIMS falls down big time in this area (and remember I am a die-hard emotionally connected Blackberry user!).

Experiment yourself.  Compare Blackberry’s apps menu to that of the iPhone or Android.   Blackberry makes the user work harder!  I believe that is a total game changer and just I beg RIM to get it.  RIM, is your technology so “legacy” in today’s mobile world that makes change difficult?  Is that why you are focusing on far-reaching global markets and not on your most devoted customers?  WE WANT MORE (AND BETTER) BLACKBERRY APPS damn it!  Can’t you JUST make it easier for us to blend our personal and professional lives on our Blackberries?  Please do not ignore your most loyal users!  Stop making us work so hard to find, download and use your apps, otherwise your press releases–at some time in the future, are not going to be so glowing!