The Brand New AFC-120

So Harry Marks and I had a brief back and twitforth on the new “statement-making” BlackBerry Performa Torch 9810/50/60, and why and how RIM may want to streamline their product line.

Like most of us, I have some limited retail experience (in my case, cameras*, of the predigital kind, if you remember those), though it seems RIM maybe doesn’t. My experience has shown there are a couple of different potential customers, obviously: those who walk in the store knowing what they want to buy. They’ve done some research, or are tied to a brand or product line already. There’s not a lot a salesperson can do to dissuade them from their course of action, which makes the salesperson’s job that much easier. I’ll go so far as to remove the potential here, and just call them customers. My totally uninformed sense, though, is that this market isn’t big enough to keep any industry going. No brand can exist solely based on its own fanbase, it needs casual customers as well, who may then become brand fans.

These casual customers, though, remain potential: a sale is by no means a given. These people need some convincing. They have some vague, often contradictory ideas of what they want and need, and especially need someone to help them sort out their options. First, there are a lot of competing brands, and they may stick with one they’ve had good experience with. Sony, say, has made reasonable stereo equipment over the years, and maybe the buyer has had a radio that’s run without problems for many years, so a Sony product may already elevate itself. So having a wide range of consumer electronics benefits a manufacturer, though this works in reverse, too.

So because RIM doesn’t have RIM stores, let’s imagine someone walking into a store, probably their carrier of choice, and looking at new phones. (I did this recently myself, a small little Telus store around the corner from the office, where I could play with a range of Android phones, Windows phones, and BlackBerries. Not so much the iPhone: two models, the 3GS and the 4. The 3GS is clearly last year’s model, albeit just fine for a lot of people, especially at $0.00 with a 3 year contract.) So the salesperson will probably ask a bunch of questions, like what you’re using now, what you’re looking for, the usual patter. Maybe it gets narrowed down to a platform, or a feature set. The salesperson always has an agenda, because they get different commissions for different products at different times, so because RIM doesn’t have dedicated stores that feature only their product, they’re already competing with the salesperson’s interests.

But let’s say it comes down to a brand, and let’s say that’s RIM. How many models does RIM have on the market? More than it needs, I’ll wager, and critical to that are the identities those models have. Without looking it up, what’s the difference between a Bold and a Torch? Or a Storm? Or a Pearl? Or the 9850? Or the 9800? Wait, those two Torches don’t even look the same… 9800 or 9810? What is Tri-band UMTS networks? Let’s not even talk about the Style....

Here’s what happens a lot of the time: the potential customer leaves. The salesperson presents all the options, and the answer is “Hmm, I’ll have to think about that.” Now, sometimes they do think about it, and come back. And maybe they’ve remembered something of what they’ve been told, and sometimes not. I can easily imagine someone being (almost) sold on a Torch, and coming back and buying a Storm, because they’re just similar enough. Or they ask a different salesperson to see a different phone, and the fun starts all over again.

The iPhone is one extreme, but the iPod line shows how multiple products can be available, and easily identified. A cheap running model? The Shuffle. What does it do best? Plays your tunes on shuffle mode. Small? The Nano. What is it? It’s small, it’s nano, right? Something with apps? The Touch. Maximum space? The Classic (though not long for the world). The names help, they help a whole lot. They make exactly the kinds of statements RIM would like to make, but can’t.

*(If you didn’t guess, the AFC-120 was the name of an in-house camera model; the AFC, of course, stood for “A Fuckin’ Camera”. I don’t think I sold any.)