Flatlining User Base May Spell End of RIM

Meshach writes "There is an article in the Globe and Mail that says that the user base for Blackberry has stopped growing for the first time in the company's history, and speculates that this is the beginning of the end of RIM. The main problem seems to be that RIM's new Blackberry models like the Bold and Torch are selling poorly, and their production costs are much higher than other products manufactured in China. A recent research report says that after BB10 the company will need to sell or drastically change its business model."

Comments

Re:RIM's Main Problem

[teg]

RIM's main problem is that enterprise companies have started moving away from the platform. People don't want to carry around several smart phones and are much more eager to choose either iPhone or WP7 phones. Microsoft is known for being the office centric company and therefore has fantastic support for Exchange server and office apps. RIM lost the audience it had when Windows Phones were introduced (while Windows Mobile also had many work users, WP was a major improvement)..

While you present an interesting theory, reality is that noone is using Windows Phone. They had a market share of 3% of smartphones shipped. iPhone in particular and Android are the ones eating Blackberry's lunch. To make this even worse, this quarter Windows Phone is currently only sold on known obsolete phones. I'm glad I didn't get suckered into buying a phone that obsolete immediately, unlike Nexus Phones and iPhones.

Re:RIM's Main Problem

[PNutts]

Don't forget that Android devices are ridiculously easy to lock down and set up with full encryption. There are actually companies out there whose entire business is doing just that for the corporate use scenario.

Its so stupidly easy to integrate Android with all of their existing email and even internal messaging apps(most of which are written in Java and trivially ported to native) that it beggars belief that they would consider much of anything else.

iPhone doesn't allow the kind of direct control that Corporate security demands, and WP7 has such a low penetration that no one is asking for it anyways. Android, even though there could definitely be better solutions, is currently the only real choice for corporate america. The worker drones get something that does everything an iPhone does(in some cases does it better, in some cases worse, but the important things are roughly the same, except for the GPS nav on android is much better) and they get their security.

The iPhone Configurator allows corporations to manage iPhones. But even with that, the iPhone's data-at-rest encryption and Activesync compliance hisorically gave them a heads-up over other BYODs. In addition, third party apps for iOS / Android have provided more granular and non-managed security features. For Android it filled in encryption feature gaps which is no longer an issue on the latest devices. On the iPhone the biggest benefit of these apps was to sandbox corporate data from personal, including a remote wipe.

Re:RIM is already dead

[Attila Dimedici]

Seven years ago was 2005. According to Wikipedia, RIM turned its first profit in 2004. So you appear to be saying that you declared Blackberry dead just when it started taking off. That is certainly possible, but it doesn't mean you are prescient, it means you are an idiot. In addition you comment that you thought their infrastructure was "cool for the beginning of the 90's", considering that the first device using RIM technology shipped in 1998, that means you thought their technology was obsolete when it first shipped. I could go on, but your comment suggests that you know nothing about the history of RIM