With the new Blackberry Z10 released on February 5th in Canada, many realized that the new product was not the only new thing the market would have to get used to. Research in Motion has officially changed their name to Blackberry— the name that almost everyone associates with their company in the first place.
Within the marketing mix, it is obvious that Blackberry hopes to touch on its “promotion”aspect. With the wide variety of smartphones out there in the market, it has become evident that the promotion of the product has become essential to its success. Taking a look at the famous Apple product launches and the sleek ads displaying their new releases, the hype it brings up as well as sales it generates thereafter seems to be a recipe for success. Blackberry must learn to convince the wary public that despite the hiccups they have experienced in the past year, their new phones are just as good– or even better– than the leading alternatives out there. Of course, facing both Apple and Samsung– the two major leaders currently in the smartphone market– might almost be impossible, but the rebranding of the company may be one of the best first steps.
So what exactly is Blackberry trying to rebrand themselves as? I believe it is mostly to unite their company and products under a single name. Although RIM has been recognized in Canada and North America, many around the world do not see the link between RIM and its products, mistakenly referring to the company as simply Blackberry. By changing their name, it allows them to capitalize on something that they have already established: devices that provides security and an excellent user experience.
My classmate Winnie Li also points out that the name change may also be to associate themselves as a good phone for the public consumer market, and not just businesses and government organizations. I think this will be an interesting switch in their target market, and I too am interested to see how the public will react to the new marketing strategies Blackberry will be throwing out.
Blackberry’s CMO explains their name change
Sources:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2013/01/29/business-rim-blackberry.html
Karen K. Lee 
Yeah, I still get the whole “Research in wha?” From people when I talk about blackberry, will be interesting to see where they are headed in the end.
Yeah! Blackberry is so well known, whereas their company’s name gets people confused. It definitely will be interesting because now they decided to go with Blackberry, which although is more well known, has been stigmatized by the public especially due to the company’s hiccups last year
Oh the Irony, If they re-branded the stock trade name they would confuse what little investors they have left, they better hope that this latest phone product saves their bacon huh?
Your studies sound interesting. I think I would enjoy learning about that sort of thing. Man, Blackberry really has to make it with this new phone cause they’re not going to get another chance. Everyones got that “Blackberry is going down” mentality. It really wouldn’t surprise me if this phone becomes popular. I think people are getting sick of the iphone.