A new “Blackberry Smart Phone” that Research in Motion has been keeping under wraps has been exposed by bloggers.
But the burning question is they bloggers or a carefully developed viral PR campaign. In recent weeks RIM followers have been teased by an enigmatic and resourceful character that has been sending proprietary product information to the Web. The source goes by the e-pseudonym of Boy Genius and has been feeding his scoops to Engadget.com, one of the industry’s most popular blogs.
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In June, he gave word of a “Stealth BlackBerry” that would play music and appear on a provider network by October or November. By the beginning of this month, Boy Genius had the first public pictures of the device, showing its four-inch length alongside a ruler, and the exterior from all angles. A few days later he had a name and a price. The “
“He has very good connections within the industry,” Peter Rojas, founder and editor of Engadget, said in a phone interview. “I don’t want to say too much about his background, but he actually approached us and said I want to give you guys some great exclusives.” Many people are coming to the site with information, but 95 per cent of it never gets published because of credibility concerns, he added.
As Boy Genius has been posting, RIM’s stock has been surging. It’s up 30 per cent this month, closing at $82.74 yesterday on the Nasdaq Stock Market. “RIM, I know you love how The Boy Genius has your stock above $80 per share for the first time since April. This is viral marketing at its best,” the mysterious source said in a posting on Engadget yesterday.
Some consumer electronics experts, however, question how beneficial the hype really is.
“If I know there’s a great product coming out in six months, why do I want to buy the product that’s on the market today? It can destroy demand for the existing offering,” said analyst Rob Enderle Group, which specialises in emerging technology.
“You can run into revenue problems. That’s the trade-off. Investors get excited about future products that will bid the stock up, but then if you miss your revenue numbers, that stock will come down dramatically.”
Publications don’t have any responsibility to maintain a company’s secrets as long as they are obtained legally. But a company whose product is leaked has a security problem that needs to be fixed, Mr. Enderle said.
In commenting on the situation, RIM spokesman Mark Guibert said last night that “the on-line rumour mill is simply a fact of life for any manufacturer, but it doesn’t typically change a company’s launch plans.”
This week, Boy Genius posted a video to Engadget, panning several lines of a document that appeared to come from an internal website at a major