The Jake Dwyer Blog

Drewbot: Loyal Customer Myopia

Who needs a TiVo with four HD tuners and storage for nearly two weeks of HD content? I’ll bet you $600 it’s a person who already owns a TiVo, if not several. Same for BlackBerry: are accolades like “best keyboard ever” relevant to anyone who doesn’t own a BlackBerry?

High-end BlackBerrys and TiVos are short-term business boosts, at beast. They extract profits from passionate consumers with little regard for growing their base. Such pricey products that pander to loyal users are an appealing option when companies need to show the market profits now. These companies are scared to go back to the drawing board and invest in R&D while abandoning the requests of core customers who seem to be the only people still rooting for them.

This is a point that seems to be lost in the whole demise of RIM. Nobody is switching to a Blackberry from some other smart phone these days. They keep some of their loyalists, but they can’t ever gain market share or drive profits on watching most of your users leave for better/cooler products and keeping some of your passionate users hanging on. There is no logical reason why a Blackberry costs the same as an iPhone, from a competitive standpoint. None.

Source: dbreunig