Loyalty

There are no apps.

I can't tell you how many people are waiting for BlackBerry 10. I see them with their Bolds, living in the dark ages, protesting they've not shifted to an Android or iPhone because they're waiting for this new product.

Which will be dead on arrival.

It's like buying a new car and finding out there's no gasoline. The handset is integral, but the apps are the ecosystem, they're the indispensable infrastructure.

This world is built on misinformation and ignorance. Listen to the hoi polloi and you'll never get it right. I still remember a friend telling me he wouldn't sign up for AOL because it was controlled by Scientologists, so he picked EarthLink, which is the company that was started by members of that tribe. And just today a woman told me she wouldn't buy a smartphone at all, because if you did all your movements would be tracked. She didn't know that law enforcement already utilizes the tracking ability in regular cell phones to apprehend criminals, and that you can turn location notices off on smartphones.

Then again, people click on phishing scams every day.

But the point is people don't know the facts.

I was at the top of Vail Mountain today, at 11,000 feet, and I had LTE on Verizon. Meanwhile, my buddy with AT&T tells me it's just as good, even though he didn't even have 3G. Yes, Verizon has a bigger LTE footprint than all its rivals. But try to convince someone with a rival provider, even after you e-mail them the "Consumer Reports" reports!

That's what loyalty does for you.

It's hard to gain a customer. It's not so easy to lose one.

All the bloviating online tells you to beware of alienating just a single customer, that you should sacrifice your personality and rationality for fear of losing one paying person. I'm gonna let you in on a dirty little secret. Very few people bitch. And it takes a long time for your company to lose customers and go downhill. Dell Hell was widespread long before there was a website excoriating the company. As for lost sales...there weren't that many, Dell's business model of selling direct when you could buy for cheap at your local office store is what hurt the company. Most buyers were too lazy to switch. They didn't want to venture into the unknown.

If I get an Android or iPhone, will I get my e-mail? Yup! Probably better than on a BlackBerry if you don't have an exchange server, and most individuals do not.

As for apps... Most people are still unaware of their utility. BlackBerry users can barely surf the web, never mind check the temperature, read the news and...

So focus on gaining customers. If your product is bad and your service is lousy, you'll be in trouble over time, but create a breakthrough product and gain your legion first. That's how BlackBerry triumphed to begin with. Imagine that, e-mail on a phone!

Now young people don't even use e-mail. And texting on an iPhone is free to other iPhones and for the first time ever, the quantity of texts sent in the U.S. has faltered.

Times constantly change.

You want to change with them.

But know that getting others to change is damn near impossible. Talk to the car brands. They just want to get you in for a test drive. Anything to experience their product. Because they know if you buy one...chances are you're gonna buy another.

P.S. I'm reading this book "The Chaperone." I don't really recommend it, it's about a woman who chaperones Louise Brooks to New York from Kansas. Fictionalized, of course. Meanwhile, Louise frustrates the chaperone, who ultimately learns there is method in some of Louise's madness:

"She would owe this understanding to her time in New York, and even more to Louise. That's what spending time with the young can do - it's the big payoff for all the pain. The young can exasperate, of course, and frighten, and condescend, and insult, and cut you with their still unrounded edges. But they can also drag you, as you protest and scold and try to pull away, right up to the window of the future, and even push you through."

Hear any young people bitch about the incomes of songwriters? They barely mention the demise of the album, never mind record company profits. Want to know where we're going? Interact with the young, they're literally the future, they'll show you the way. See any youngsters using BlackBerries? Once upon a time they all had Curves, they're long gone, because when you're young you're fickle, you're still experimenting, which is why advertisers barely care about oldsters, it's the young that are impressionable.


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