It should come as no surprise for those familiar with the Indian market, but now there are numbers to prove it.
In a analysis of comments made by people on social media, research firm Simplify360 found 65% of the comments to be negative.
“Though Blackberry received considerable attention of the online social media users, the buzz were predominantly not in favour of the brand. The staggering price of Rs 43,490 at the time of launch was one of the reason behind the negative reaction of consumer towards the brand. Only 11% indicated that they are likely to buy and 7% of them indicated that they are eager to buy the new Blackberry Q10,” the firm, which tracks consumer sentiment using software, said.
Analytics firms have developed software that can quickly gauge the mood on social media towards a particular person, product or event by looking for keywords such as ‘good’, ‘bad’ etc. in tweets and other messages.
The firm also said that its survey found that 63% of those using blackberry would not recommend it to others and one in every four users of Blackberry are likely to recommend others to use the phone. 12% of those using the phone are likely to switch to other brands. The last number, however, is not something BlackBerry needs to lose its sleep over, as ‘anti-incumbency’ tends to be strong in a rapidly-developing product class such as mobile phones.
BlackBerry recently said it had sold 1 million Blackberry 10 devices globally.
“While other players like Samsung and Apple have clearly eaten into the once number one position in the Smartphone category held by Blackberry, consumer sentiments in social media gave a clear indication that Blackberry has a long way to go to regain its lost glory,” Simplify360 said.