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Random Celebrity Endorsement Of The Day: Will.i.am And RIM

Erm. Huh? RIM is looking for another angle into the consumer market and decided partnering with Will.i.am and his Dipdive online community is the way to do it. If you're left scratching your head at this one, you're not alone. Is a music and politics-themed social community the right angle for RIM?

First off, does celebrity endorsement really sell products? It doesn't do it for me. I don't buy things because some famous person also uses them. I use the phones I use because they do what I need them to do. I use the computers I use because they do what I need them to do. Same goes for all my major purchases, ranging from tech equipment to guitars, amplifiers, and more. What about you?

RIM has partnered with Will.i.am in an attempt to have a wider appeal in the consumer market. As in, "Hey, look! We're down with [insert celebrity endorser/partner name here]. That makes us, you know, cool and stuff. Go buy our smartphones." Mmm, I don't think so.

RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie commented on the partnership: "Probably the two hottest trends in wireless are social networking ... and the other one is the multimedia, which is principally portable music." Dipdive "brings the artist into a direct relationship with the fan," he said. Yes, it does do that. But RIM needs to improve the "multimedia" capability of its devices further if it really wants something like this partnership to work. It has made strides, for sure, but its music and video playing software is lacking badly when compared with competitors Windows Mobile, S60, and the iPhone. Each of those platforms offers far more robust capabilities and a higher level of user friendliness.

Social communities are indeed popular. Phones that have the capability to interact with those communities will certainly appeal to a particular segment of the market. Dedicated applications that work with Facebook and MySpace are one step. Equipping its phones with a browser better than its current WAP offering would be another way to boost that interactivity. Or heck, call it a day and just put Opera Mini on there, RIM.

A couple of other points to ponder. Reuters points out that 8 million of the 12 million BlackBerry users are government or enterprise-level customers. That's RIM's meat and potatoes. These users are not going to take advantage of this new partnership with Will.i.am and, in fact, will probably be prevented from accessing it. But RIM isn't targeting them. It wants consumers.

Is this partnership really going to bring in new customers? Is it really going to drive more consumer adoption? RIM has to take more steps in making its devices -- and operating system -- more consumer friendly if really wants to bring in the consumers.

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