To avoid brand dilution, RIM’s corporate brand name is disappearing today and is being replaced by BlackBerry for shareholders and employees in an attempt to instill brand values internally.

While the (too) long-awaited new Blackberry OS is innovative and will help reduce churn among BlackBerry’s 79 million existing subscribers to competing devices from Apple and Android in 2013, the longer-term challenge for the BlackBerry brand is still huge.

Don’t get me wrong: The great strides that BlackBerry’s made in the device and OS deserve credit.

The two new devices announced today — in a price range above $500 — also look great and on par with, if not better than, the best high-end smartphones on the market today; they have eventually put an end to the poor browsing, app, and multimedia experiences delivered on BlackBerry devices until now. The new OS brings some very interesting and innovative features. The smart contextual prediction keyboard, the BlackBerry Hub, the BlackBerry Balance, as well as the new video chat and screen-sharing functionalities available to BBM users will also offer a seamless and innovative experience to the “business execs,” “working moms,” and “hyperactive teens” that BlackBerry is targeting. Telecom carriers will also significantly support the new devices, with about 200 operators worldwide launching them by June 2013. Why? BlackBerry devices have always delivered more profitable customers to carriers because of their network efficiency. Due to the limited uptake (for now) of Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8, telecom operators will no doubt give the new products a chance to succeed in order to avoid being dependent on Apple or Google.

However, there is little rationale today for most product strategists and marketers to invest in customized BlackBerry experiences.

At the beginning of this year, I took the time to sit down with my colleague Dan Bieler, principal analyst on Forrester's Business Technology Futures team and a specialist in the telecom space, to discuss the top trends that will affect the European telco landscape this year.

Although we believe that the business/consumer split is increasingly vanishing, we decided to split the top 10 carrier themes that will matter in the European telco market in 2013 by enterprise and consumer perspectives.

In the enterprise segment, we see five main themes:

• Over the top (OTT) and app-based communication services will become part of the IT landscape. OTT voice, social media, and messaging will spread in the enterprise space at the expense of traditional services. Our research shows that professional workers who travel are the most likely to embrace application-based communication services, often irrespective of what their company’s official IT policy is. Still, 2013 will not be the year (yet) that sees RCSe becoming a B2B2C communications platform.
• Cloud-based enterprise services by carriers will see increasing interest from businesses. Communication-as-a-service will receive increased attention by CIOs as they plan UCC projects. However, as our research shows, carriers will not be perceived as the top choice of providers for cloud-based services. Mobile device management firms like AirWatch and MobileIron will offer reselling opportunities for carriers but limit the carriers’ ability to add value around device and app store management. Business models for cloud-based data analytics of end user demand will grow in importance in 2013, but will begin to materialize on a larger scale only in 2014.

I stink at New Year’s resolutions. My track record is so bad I’ve all but given up making them in my non-work life. But as a professional exercise, it struck me that writing down some New Year’s resolutions could actually be a really great thing, something I could refer back to throughout the year to remind me of important unanswered questions I had at the start of 2013.

For me, this year must be about continuing to evolve my thinking on what it means - and what it takes - to be a successful 21^st century marketer. This means thinking beyond my favorite acronyms, the display media LumaScape, and RTB growth numbers, and aiming bigger and broader. So, this year, I resolve to:

• Prove the value of programmatic buying, data management and advanced attribution. I want to know, and show, once and for all that there are real, tangible, bottom line benefits to adopting these tools and practices - to the industry, to marketers, to the agencies who support them, and to the publishers who serve them. I genuinely believe that if buyers embrace the concepts outlined in our report, The Future of Digital Media Buying, it’s a money-making decision in the long run. But the best way to convince others is to prove it! So I’m fielding a survey to marketers and agency folks right now to try and get some answers. In fact, if you’re a marketer or agency person (no vendors please), I’d LOVE for you to take the survey. It’s here.

Sixty-seven percent of interactive marketers are currently using mobile or are planning to start using it in the next year, according to our Q2 global executive survey. That’s great news! But before we celebrate mobile finally coming into its own, we have to acknowledge that mobile is still a new channel with a learning curve that needs to be traversed before it becomes a fully integrated part of brands’ marketing programs.

Here’s some more good news: you know those playbooks you’ve been hearing so much about? We’ve just released one for mobile marketing to help you develop your mobile marketing skills and practices, step-by-step, from the ground up. In this playbook, we’ll help you:

1. Discover just how important the rise of the always addressable customer is to the development of mobile in our vision module. You’ll learn how to pick the best partners to help you achieve your goals out of a vast landscape of agencies and service providers. And in the coming month, you’ll find out how successful mobile marketers built a business case to secure budget and resources for their programs.