BBX -What’s In a Name?  For RIM It’s Litigation

One wonders if Research In Motion bothers to consult their Legal Counsel. Having announced the acronym BBX as the branding tool for their next generation mobile platform, they found themselves being in correspondence with New Mexico based Basis International Ltd. who for twenty five years have held the BBX trademark.

Not daunted by the possibility of legal action Research In Motion appear to have ploughed ahead, doing nothing to hedge their bets on a product whose launch appears far from imminent.

Who Are The Antagonists?

Albuquerque based BASIS state that they have spent over two decades promoting BBS as their “Operating System Independent”. This refers to worldwide patents on products that run on Windows, Linux, Mac and others.

BASIS conclude that RIM view a smartphone OS BBX as being uniquely different from the BBX software programming language.  RIM remain noncommittal.

What About The Protagonist?

Perhaps events over the past few months have distracted RIM; the three day outage fiasco, the lack of interest in Fondleslab Playbook, its declining market share and declining market price.

By most analysts’ evaluation RIM need litigation like the Titanic Needed An Iceberg.

What Is BlackBerry BBX?

When announcing BBX at a developer conference in October RIM dissuaded no one from believing that it was the company’s ticket to return to customer favour. BBX would resolve their problems with Playbook and improve the performance of standard BlackBerry’s.

This weeks report in the Los Angeles Times included upbeat commentary by a major investor, Leon Cooperman. It was however noted that neither the investor nor the manufacturer had as yet alluded to the miracle content that will make BBX the next great advance.

Wherefore Goes’ Thou BlackBerry?

In 2007 BlackBerry dismissed the recently launched iPhone as a consumer device; divorced from BlackBerry’s core consumer and, one must assume from RIM’s vision of the future.

Consulted again in 2008, after Google announced Android, RIM responded with a dismissive “We know more about mobile operating systems than Google”.  Oh, do you?  Where is the evidence?

So, Is BBX Finally The Secret Weapon?

At UnlockWorldwide.com we can only hope so.  2011 finds Apple selling more than 100 million iPhones per year, Android being the predominant smartphone platform, and Blackberry reporting declining sales.

A BlackBerry BBX launch, followed by lengthy, costly, debilitating litigation, is not the secret of success. RIM’s need for “X Factor” needs explanation; otherwise we will all be quite happy with the BlackBerry BBY.