Research in Motion CEO Thorsten Heins is banking on early users of the company's Blackberry 10 smartphone to generate the word-of-mouth buzz that he hopes will trigger a snowball effect of customers to the new device. And he's giving his home-country crowd in Canada a rare opportunity to be that buzz. We're the first snowflakes.
In an interview with BNN's Michael Hainsworth at the launch announcement for the BB10, Mr. Heins said the company is looking to create "a dynamic around Blackberry 10 that it gets recommended and recommended." He identified this phenomenon – known in the industry as the Net Promoter Score – as his primary yardstick for success of the new device, indicating it matters more to the company for this launch than specific financial and unit-sales numbers. It's the kind of trend indicator that may be a harbinger of upward momentum in market share – something RIM desperately needs after years of inferior products whittled down its imprint on the North American market to barely a statistical blip.
Intriguing, then, that Canadian customers have been placed at the vanguard in building this hoped-for momentum. The first BB10s go on sale in Canada on Feb. 5, less than a week away; mobile carriers are already taking preorders. Canadians will have the devices in their hands a month or more ahead of the critical U.S. market, where the BB10 won't go on sale until some time in March.
Canada is by no means alone in getting to the new phone well before the Americans. In fact, British customers will be able to buy it starting Jan. 31. Here are two big English-speaking, developed-economy user bases that will have several weeks to see what they think of RIM's potentially make-or-break entry into the increasingly cutthroat smartphone market – and share their thoughts with the biggest English-speaking, developed-economy user base of them all.
Of these two, though, the Canadian experience may be the more critical in influencing potential customers among our American cousins. For marketers, in many ways we're America Junior; substantial cultural overlap, shared experiences, and a physical proximity that makes Canada a perfect test market. And for business users, especially, the flow of communications across the border will mean Canadian users will have potential American customers' ears very quickly.
For those reasons, Canadians – who typically get access to flashy new tech-gizmo products long after our American neighbours have told us all about it – will this time get to be the ones sharing our experience with inquiring minds south of the border. The extra month or so, and hoped-for positive buzz, will also give RIM time and (it hopes) strong arguments to win over more key application developers (such as Zynga, Netflix and Instagram, who are conspicuously absent from the BB10's initial lineup more 70,000 or so apps) and sway the major U.S. carriers to give the product a prominent place in their smartphone offerings.
Of course, for the strategy to work, Canadians are going to have to love the device. Maybe RIM is hoping that as a made-in-Canada success story to which many Canadians still have an emotional attachment, its Canadian customers may have a predisposition to liking a decent RIM product and telling all their American friends.
Nevertheless, the approach is only going to take RIM as far as the quality of the product. For the next few weeks, anyway, Canadians' say on that quality may well dominate the chatter in the technology world.
David Parkinson