What does RIM need to do to recover?

[eawmp1]

RIM is even losing on the enterprise front. Ever since employees and the CEO's began using the iPhone and Android devices, there has been a populist uprising against the IT types. Now with options like Good, an iPhone can be an enterprise device.

RIM is another case study in the hubris of thinking you are invincible. RIP.

 

[miniConvert]

RIM can only recover by refocussing purely on enterprise. It'll have to accept a massive cut in sales in the process, but it must accept that it experienced a sales 'bubble' and that the heady numbers it was selling were a blip and not the norm.

The Blackberry became a fashionable item in consumer markets, despite being poorly equipped for consumer needs when compared to smartphones from Apple and Samsung. RIM tried to capitalise on consumer sales $_$ and lost their focus, as well as their cool. In all likeliness, short of coming up with an entirely separate consumer-centric product line a few years back, there's not much they could've done to prevent their current 'decline'. The central issue, to me, is that they neglected their core market, and so now they have no safe ground to fall back on.

I can't see the Blackberry being relevant in consumer or enterprise markets in a few years time.

 

[ugahairydawgs]

All they need is one killer device and a little bit of marketing momentum. Today's society has a complete "flavor of the month" mentality. People are constantly looking for the latest and the greatest, so if RIM can deliver a BB10 phone that has something that differentiates itself from the rest (in a good way) and then puts some significant capital behind a marketing campaign to let people know what is there, then they'll be in much better shape.

It won't be an overnight fix though. It will take a 3rd party, be it Microsoft or RIM, many years to cut into the significant market share that Apple and the Android vendors own.

 

[Consultant]

I'm fairly certain RIM have been doing keyboard-less BlackBerry's for some time now.

But all the reviews said its software keyboard is no good. Their "new keyboard" announcement is supposed to show that they have something that might work.

 

[maflynn]

But all the reviews said its software keyboard is no good. Their "new keyboard" announcement is supposed to show that they have something that might work.

They're are promoting it as a significant improvement over other's implementation. Whether that's true or not is too early to tell. We need to see a phone with the keyboard in people's hands.

 

[smithrh]

Of the five people I know that refused to even think about relinquishing their RIM devices, four have already gone to iPhone and the other is almost certainly going to go when his contract is up.

It was quite an interesting evolution. The first part involved them denying that the iPhone (or Android, for that matter) even existed. Then there was the usual denial stage: "I could never work on a glass keyboard" etc.

Mind you, that statement was made without even having tried to use a glass keyboard for more than a few moments. When I would show them that *I* could type on it with a demo, I would follow up with a challenge to at least try it. Surprise surprise, they could actually type fine...

Once that imaginary barrier was taken down, AND they saw all of the apps and the Exchange integration, it was (and is) all over except the crying. Toss in a few system-wide outages into the mix...

We're full on into the acceptance stage.

All they need is one killer device and a little bit of marketing momentum. Today's society has a complete "flavor of the month" mentality.

Not so sure about that. There's a whole ecosystem here...

It won't be an overnight fix though.

OK, sounds like you're not all that sure about it either...

 

[SteveAbootman]

Apple Computer was once in a similar position to RIM only in the personal computer market. They were able to not only survive, but thrive because they began to think about innovations in new markets and didn't try to focus on beating the incumbents in their traditional segment.

RIM can try all they want to take back market share in the Smartphone/Tablet market, but it's most likely a futile effort. Instead, they need to try and predict the next big wave in tech and be the first to ride it and profit from it.

Difficult yes, but at this point it's probably the only option they have save for Apple, Windows, Google all litigating each other into oblivion.

 

[Consultant]

Apple Computer was once in a similar position to RIM only in the personal computer market. They were able to not only survive, but thrive because they began to think about innovations in new markets and didn't try to focus on beating the incumbents in their traditional segment.

RIM can try all they want to take back market share in the Smartphone/Tablet market, but it's most likely a futile effort. Instead, they need to try and predict the next big wave in tech and be the first to ride it and profit from it.

Difficult yes, but at this point it's probably the only option they have save for Apple, Windows, Google all litigating each other into oblivion.

Huge difference. While Apple was not doing well, Steve Jobs spent millions of his money development NeXT.

RIM sat on its behind for 5 years, and only now introduced an ALPHA quality developer preview.

RIM is more similar to Palm / WebOS.

 

[maflynn]

Huge difference. While Apple was not doing well, Steve Jobs spent millions of his money development NeXT.

I think the comparison is more similar then you think

Apple struggled at creating a successor to system 7, they finally decided to buy someone else's OS to achieve this. They had NeXT and BeOS on their short list. Gil Amelio thought by buying NeXT and bringing on Jobs as an adviser would be a great marketing win.

RIM purchased QNX and is working to build a new OS that its based on.

Like Apple, RIM uses a propriety hardware/software and while it once was a market leader its market share has sunk.

I think it echo's Apple more then Palm - the difference is RIM doesn't have a gifted and charismatic CEO who has a lot of vision of the what the future will be. That is there can only be one Steve Jobs

 

[Confuzzzed]

Shrink to grow. That's the only way. They need to invest in security (most enterprises are paranoid about this) and improving the UI lag of their touchscreens. They have an advantage (still) with the near flawless network connectivity. Still, if it's seamless email delivery you are after (NAILED ON, ALL THE TIME, NO EXCUSES), Blackberries are better than iPhones. Especially in Europe. All that will change of course with LTE

 

[maflynn]

^^^What about the outage that plagued BB last year? That's certainly not "NAILED ON, ALL THE TIME, NO EXCUSES"

The advantages that android and iPhone have in the enterprise over blackberry is that many employees use their own thus saving the company $$. They still can enforce the security such as encryption and pass codes on these phones but at a fraction of the cost of dealing with BB

 

[smithrh]

^^^What about the outage that plagued BB last year? That's certainly not "NAILED ON, ALL THE TIME, NO EXCUSES"

There have been quite a few BB outages over the past few years... AFAIK they never actually got to "root cause" on that last one, which means it could happen again at any time.

I don't know about anyone else, but I don't need all my email going through RIM's email gateway in Canada... SPOF.

 

[Reach9]

There are so many posts and threads in here with people saying that RIM is dead, RIM has nothing to offer, RIM's next BlackBerry will be the last.

I was wondering though, what do you guys think RIM needs to do to recover from the last few months of dropping sales? If you were the CEO, what would you to do get back to the top?

Sell the company.

The BlackBerry is doing amazing in pre-paid markets, along with Nokia. However, those are easy to dominate for Samsung and maybe Apple as well.

 

[Consultant]

I think the comparison is more similar then you think

Apple struggled at creating a successor to system 7, they finally decided to buy someone else's OS to achieve this. They had NeXT and BeOS on their short list. Gil Amelio thought by buying NeXT and bringing on Jobs as an adviser would be a great marketing win.

RIM purchased QNX and is working to build a new OS that its based on.

Like Apple, RIM uses a propriety hardware/software and while it once was a market leader its market share has sunk.

I think it echo's Apple more then Palm - the difference is RIM doesn't have a gifted and charismatic CEO who has a lot of vision of the what the future will be. That is there can only be one Steve Jobs

I would say RIM is closer to HP and Palm WebOS than Apple and Mac OS.

 

[Mak47]

RIM needs to focus on what it does best and stop trying to catch up to the other players in the industry.

RIM has historically done a few things really well. Reliable email access that was second to none and Blackberry Messenger. Up until the last few years, they've also provided both of those things on well built, reliable hardware.

In their rush to copy everything else that's been successful they've forgotten about these things.

5 years ago a Blackberry was a very advanced phone, nowadays it's quite basic (at least the old ones). Blackberry should go back to basics. Offer rock solid email, BBM & good quality hardware for people who aren't looking for an iPhone or Android phone. They could even negotiate with carriers to provide these limited services with a special Blackberry data plan.

Blackberry's browser has always been bad. Apps have always been poorly implemented. Cameras etc, have always been lackluster. Stop pretending to be able to do all of those things, make a good quality "Basic" device for calls, messaging & email and market it as a simple phone.

Carriers would likely welcome it as they roll out supposed shared data plans and those consumers out there who aren't ready to deal with a full fledged smart phone would have an option that gives them something better than a flip phone.