It doesn't matter how coy Research In Motion Ltd. has been about launching its first multimedia smart phone, because Boy Genius has the buzz on BlackBerry.
RIM followers have been teased and titillated for weeks by an enigmatic and resourceful character in the United States who 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.
In June, he gave word of a “Stealth BlackBerry” that would play music and appear on a U.S. wireless 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 “Pearl” would make its debut at $199 (U.S.) next month on the network of T-Mobile USA Inc., complete with a 1.3-megapixel camera and expandable memory, he said.
By last week, Boy Genius had pictures of the retail box and a specific launch date of Sept. 12.
“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 Tuesday 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 Tuesday.
Some consumer electronics experts, however, question how beneficial the hype really is for the Waterloo, Ont., firm.
“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 at San Jose, Calif.-based Enderle Group, which specializes in emerging technology.
“You can run into revenue problems. That's the tradeoff. 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 rumor 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 T-Mobile. The posting described the document as guidelines for staff about RIM's forthcoming device.
“Inventory will begin arriving the week of August 28 and should not be shared, shown or sold to customers or others outside of T-Mobile before the September 12 launch,” the document read.
Boy Genius's prolific postings have drawn a response from RIM, which has been in touch with Engadget, according to Mr. Rojas.
But he won't say what the nature of the discussion was. He added that he is used to frustrated companies who see their trade secrets showing up on his blog daily, and admits that he receives threats of legal action almost weekly, although no company has ever followed through, he adds.
Engadget is drawing between four and five million unique viewers each month. Last year, it beat Microsoft Corp. to the punch, publishing pictures of the Xbox 360 video game console a week ahead of the official debut.
Information is flowing so quickly on the Internet that it is increasingly difficult to control secrets, Mr. Rojas said.
“A lot of companies are starting to figure out that you can't control your public relations like you used to. The smart companies are realizing that you harness it to take advantage of the fact that people are dying for information about your product,” he said.
“If a company has good products they are going to benefit in this new environment and if you have terrible products no amount of marketing will ever make that a success.”
