Desperate times must call for desperate measures, if last week's reports of a "Wake Up" protest is an example. A video blogger, Nate "Blunty3000" Burr, managed to "catch" protesters shouting "Wake up!" and marching between an Apple Store in Sydney, Australia and a bus labelled "WAKE UP."
With apologies to Samsung, sites on the Internet ran rampant with speculation that they were behind the marketing stunt. Samsung Electronics Australia publicly denied involvement the day after the video surfaced.
So if it wasn't Samsung, who else? Another Android handset manufacturer? Nokia? Or are they activists protesting working conditions in Apple's Chinese factories? The folks at Macworld Australia did some digging, and uncovered an unlikely culprit behind this stunt: Research in Motion.
Surprised? Except this time, there are some evidence paths leading to RIM that amount to more than hearsay. Consider what they found:
- The Doubleclick account identifier buried in the source for the Wake Up countdown page, "2215527," has several hits to RIM's Australian site. This was verified via a Google search for '"doubleclick" 2215527'. (But don't try that right now. All you can see are references back to Macworld's story on other sites.)
- The YouTube video blogger that posted the video above has some RIM affiliations in the past, starting with this preview of the Playbook on his YouTube channel.
- Although this third point is fairly weak, it is worth nothing that the timer on the Wake Up page corresponds to a few moments prior to the release time of Blackberry 10, on July 2 at 12:30 PDT. The date was revealed in an anonymous email to Macworld Australia.
It should go without saying that any publicity, good or bad, can only benefit the company behind it. Except in the case of RIM, their last bit of "publicity" was that major service outage last year. One can only hope this revelation, if true, stays strictly within the realm of blood thirsty warriors in the virtual smartphone wars.
Thanks to FMH for the tip!
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