I was a Nokia fan when I switched to BlackBerry, and I was floored by it. The integrated message box added to the ease of use.

Today, both Research in Motion and Nokia seem to be going through a bad patch. Though corporate executives stood by BlackBerry, RIM steadily lost the market despite having one of the best handsets.

The reason? Many felt that almost all BlackBerrys — the Bold, Tour and Curve models — looked the same.

The company came up with Storm, but the phone, despite the brilliant screen, never really took off. The Torch, a slider phone, did quite well. But the success stories were becoming fewer. BlackBerry also lagged behind in the app market space compared with iPhone and Android.

Nokia has come up with greater variety of phones. What did it in was the Symbian OS, which was regarded as quite outdated. Yes, it came up with something good — the Symbian Anna — but it was too late. By the time Anna came out, Nokia had moved towards Windows Phone and many stopped buying Nokia's high-end mobiles as they were doubtful whether Nokia would support Symbian after going with Microsoft.

Nokia also never got its act right in the touch-screen space. This, when iPhone had revolutionalised the look of a mobile phone, and smaller companies such as HTC were making brilliant touch-screen phones. Again, when it just seemed to get it right, the Microsoft tie-up announcement came as a dampener.

When almost all companies, may be with the exception of BlackBerry, embraced Android, Nokia stuck with Symbian. Between Nokia and BlackBerry, Nokia at least has the Windows Phone as a silver lining.

If BlackBerry doesn't do something drastic now, the future doesn't look bright for an undoubtedly top-class messaging phone.

Related Topics