Jim Dalrymple is reporting more bad news for RIM: NOAA is dropping BlackBerry support in favor of the iPhone 4/4S and iPad 2 running iOS 5 and above.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is dumping RIM’s BlackBerry from its list of officially supported mobile devices, according to a memo sent from the organizations CIO. According to the memo sent by Joseph F. Klimavicz, NOAA Chief Information Officer and Director for High Performance Computing and Communications, support for the BlackBerry will continue until May 12, 2012.
This is just another nail in RIM’s coffin. Marketshare and mindshare just continue to slip away from the Canadian company, and it doesn’t look like anything is going to change that any time soon. Their new CEO doesn’t seem to want to completely change the company, and so we’re likely to see RIM and their BlackBerry brand continue to tailspin.
At this point, I feel a little sad every time I write about RIM. It does feel like I’m piling on, but the facts just seem to have a pro-Apple bias. RIM is in trouble, and the whole world knows it. It is hard to see a once-dominant company go out with a whimper.
What do you think? Is RIM going to have to shutter its hardware business in hopes of saving the brand with apps and services on iOS? Sound off in the comment section, or hit us up on Twitter. Our username is @macgasm. We’d love to know if there are any BlackBerry advocates still alive.
Source: The Loop
