Jim Woods

New BlackBerry Not Taking Anything by 'Storm'

by Jim Woods   01/05/09

Simply put, the Storm satisfaction rating is similar to that of mid-tier smartphone manufacturers like Nokia (NOK) (32%), Motorola (MOT) (32%), HTC (31%) and Samsung (30%). While far from being bad, it's mediocre, which means it's a potential concern regarding RIM's head-to-head battle with Apple.

For comparative purposes, here's how the BlackBerry Storm's favorability ratings stack up against those of the original iPhone (taken in a survey of new iPhone owners in July 2007, less than a month after its initial release).

As the chart shows, the original iPhone's very satisfied rating (77%) was more than double that of the new BlackBerry Storm (33%). And the Storm's unsatisfied rating (14%) is three times higher than that of the original iPhone (5%).

BlackBerry Storm: Key Likes and Dislikes

We also asked respondents what they liked best and disliked most about the Storm.

The results show that RIM made the right choice in producing a touch-screen phone, being that it's a highly popular option in the smartphone market.

Forty-nine percent of respondents said the touch-screen interface is what they like best about their BlackBerry Storm. Other key likes included screen size (46%) and screen resolution (43%).

At the same time, the touch-screen interface may represent the BlackBerry Storm's Achilles' heel. In terms of dislikes, lack of a QWERTY keyboard (21%), touch-screen interface (20%) and difficult to use (20%) were the top issues cited, along with short battery life (21%).

Bottom Line

The smartphone market is now dominated by two companies -- Apple and Research In Motion.

According to our survey results, the Apple iPhone trails the RIM BlackBerry in terms of current market share, but the iPhone has experienced strong growth since its inception and explosive growth since the release of the 3G model in July 2008.

Going forward, RIM is showing a surge in momentum due to its slew of product launches, and appears capable of giving Apple a strong challenge in 2009. But the real test in a cutthroat market is how satisfied consumers actually are with their new phones.

In this survey, we found the BlackBerry Storm's satisfaction rating to be middle-of-the-road -- lagging behind the average rating for other BlackBerry models. The BlackBerry Storm may not be a bad phone, but the initial launch has glitches that have resulted in a mediocre satisfaction rating.

Competitive pressures may have caused the Storm to be launched before it was ready for prime time. But if RIM can fix its initial bugs quickly, the survey shows that this new offering -- along with the other recently released models -- will provide accelerated momentum for the company in 2009.

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Jim Woods is a Senior Editor for OptionsZone.com. To learn more about him, read his bio here.

The ChangeWave Alliance Research Network is a group of 20,000 highly qualified business, technology and medical professionals -- as well as early adopter consumers -- who work in leading companies of select industries. ChangeWave surveys its Network members weekly on a range of business and consumer topics, and converts the information into a series of proprietary quantitative and qualitative reports.