Blackberry Cleaning Up

Research In Motion's BlackBerry devices claimed the top spot in a recent J.D. Power and Associates ranking of smartphone user satisfaction. Judging on a series of criteria including ease of operation, OS, physical design, audio quality, battery life and utility features, J.D Power cites the speed of the BlackBerry OS and battery life among RIM's key strengths.

According to J.D. Power, customer satisfaction will profoundly influence the future of the smartphone market--highly satisfied buyers are 50% more likely to stick with the same brand of when they upgrade devices. In addition, users who claimed they are "delighted" with their smartphones are 80% more likely to recommend their brand of device to friends or colleagues.

Additional J.D. Power and Associates findings:

-35% of smartphone owners download third-party software. Most common downloads: Games (51%), travel-related programs (42%) and business applications such as Microsoft Word and Excel (36%).

-Leading factors behind selection of a specific brand of smartphone are PDA/PIM functionality, Internet capabilities, Bluetooth options, general ease of use and overall form factor/style.

This is more good news in a banner year for RIM as their stock has more than tripled in value over the last 52 weeks and today Credit Suisse analyst Michael Ounjian announced that he believes the stock can go even higher as he lifted his rating on the stock to “buy” from “neutral".

In his report Ounjian said RIM's global smartphone market share could grow to 12.1% by its 2009 fiscal year fourth quarter, and that the company should continue to dominate the U.S. smartphone market. According to Ounjian, RIM held 48.2% of North America's smartphone market share in the second quarter of its 2008 fiscal year, which ended on Sept. 1.

So if you're looking for a nice Christmas gift for that someone special, buy them a new Blackberry - they won't be disappointed.

Seattle 2.0 - List of startups in Seattle (yes, Movaya is on the list)

Go right ahead and check out the list of Seattle startup companies, maintained by Sampa founder Marcelo Calbucci. And yes, that is Movaya at rank 79 for the month. Not bad for a B2B website. And I guarantee we will move higher by December's list.

Marcelo has complied a list of startups in the Seattle area, then ranked them according to the simple average of their respective Alexa and Compete rankings. It is a great list to follow, month by month, to see who is getting more traffic (or figuring out how to game the systems!).

At Movaya, we certainly pay attention to our Alexa and Compete rankings, as noted in other posts. They are far from perfect ranking systems, but they nonetheless serve a purpose, and one such purpose is to show the financing world that you matter.

It's great that someone rounded up the community; this has been a catalyst for me to get to know more and more entrepreneurs in Seattle. You can never underestimate the importance of networking.

The other item to reiterate once again is the importance of blogs that support your company website. I think that Marcelo's blog about Seattle startups does a great job to promote his company, which is actually a Personal Private Network (like a blog you can instantly publish articles). Not only that, but he is using his own product. Movaya runs the Mobile Phone Blog, which has been a great tool for promotion of our company. We actually got a writeup in Business Week just about our blog.

If you want real evidence, simply search for 'mobile phone' at google. See where our blog ranks (currently 9th, Nov 6, 2007)