

RIM CEO: We want to be the number three platform on the market - vindicated
http://www.androidauthority.com/rim-blackberry-10-third-place-117948/

======
freejack
RIM is spending a lot of time designing an OS that will appeal to everyone. I
think they are going to find its going to be used by no one.

Even here in Canada they are losing core enterprise customers left and right.
Without these core supporters, RIM isn't long for this world.

And while I've got the conch, what kind of strategy is "We want to be #3"?
I've written about RIM's bad strategy extensively on my blog, and this feels
like just another in a series of mis-steps. None of their staff are going to
be inspired by Thorsten's lack of conviction and worse, its going to spook
whatever remaining customers and developers they have. No one wants to be on a
sinking platform, and shooting for number 3 isn't going to give anyone any
confidence that RIM will be around in a year.

My vote still goes to RIM getting out of the OS business, becoming an Android
licensee, designing some killer handsets that focus on enterprise customers
and separately, spinning Blackberry Mail and Messenger into standalone apps
that put RIM onto as many handsets as possible.

This will never happen of course. RIM, as I understand it, is still organized
around carrier sales. They don't have a user focus, and it would be hard for
this leopard to change its spots and get out of the business of catering to
carriers. (IMO, this is the real magic of the Apple story - getting a user-
centric handset into the market in a real way without pandering to the
carriers.)

~~~
jonnathanson
_"RIM is spending a lot of time designing an OS that will appeal to everyone.
I think they are going to find its going to be used by no one."_

Absolutely.

They should not be chasing the consumer, iOS-esque market. Some would say
they've lost it, but I'd actually challenge that they never had it. Blackberry
has always been an enterprise and small business solution. Historically,
unless my numbers are way off, most consumers didn't own smartphones in the
Blackberry Era. By and large, those who owned Blackberries were either using
company-issued Blackberries, or had used company-issued Blackberries and
purchased personal ones on the side. Kids and casual consumers had Motorola
RAZRs and other non-smart phones.

The critical implication here is that the Blackberry did _not_ open the
floodgates of mass, consumer smartphone adoption. The iPhone did (and lately,
the iPhone and Android have been).

In the years of Blackberry's dominance over the smartphone market, the
smartphone market was comparatively small and concentrated. And, very
important, it was use-case-specific (email). This was differentiated from the
predominant mass-consumer use case (SMS). So there was a clear and safe divide
between the two segments.

RIM was making a fortune in those days, but then it assumed that it needed to
follow suit when the iPhone launched. And it's been all downhill from there.

Meanwhile, there are still a fair number of enterprise and small business
owners and CTOs who prefer Blackberry to iOS/Android for business, and who buy
Blackberry for their businesses. That number is dwindling rapidly, as you
point out, the more Blackberries start to resemble half-hearted iPhones. But
it's still a very lucrative niche that RIM can purpose-build for. I would bet,
however, as you seem to, that RIM fails to capture it.

So what _can_ RIM do to stay relevant in enterprise? For one thing, don't shy
away from the keyboard. Embrace it. It's a point of clear differentiation, and
though the cool kids will scoff at it, many business executives still prefer
it for email. They might always prefer it. Second, develop more robust
enterprise software. Blackberry should be able to handle spreadsheets,
Powerpoint, word processing, data visualization(!!!), cross-device integration
(printers, etc.), and other key enterprise solutions in a way that iPhone and
Android don't.

This is not going to be easy. And it'll be especially difficult, in as much as
many of the standard enterprise software solutions are offered by Microsoft, a
competitor. Nobody's going to use a RIM-only spreadsheet program that doesn't
integrate with Excel, for instance.

~~~
gnaffle
The problem though, is that owning the consumer market gives iOS and Android a
tremendous advantage in terms of revenue, app selection and mindshare. That
robust enterprise software is, in many cases, already there for iOS with apps
such as iWork.

There will always be a market for keyboard devices or other niches, but I
don't think that market is anywhere big enough to sustain RIM at its present
size. I think sales of Android devices with keyboards show that.

~~~
jonnathanson
You're probably right, and if I were a betting man, I'd throw my chips on your
side of the fence here. That said, doubling down on enterprise certainly seems
like a better path forward for RIM than being a mass market iOS also-ran.

The other big issue RIM has -- and it may be a fatal issue -- is that
Blackberry is just a device; it's not a platform. Not really. The big names
(and startups/indies) in enterprise solutions aren't designing for it, or at
least not exclusively. There isn't a total RIM solution that _includes_ the
Blackberry ecosystem as a unifying hub. Instead, there's just the Blackberry
device itself, and the device is currently in a sorry state.

------
corry
If he had said "we're aiming to be #1 in 2 years", he'd look completely out-
of-touch with reality - employees deflate due to a clearly unattainable goal,
investors get concerned about an unrealistic strategy, etc etc.

Picking an achievable goal vs. promising an unachievable one is better for
morale of everyone involved IMO.

~~~
msabalau
Agreed. Still, it might have been stronger to frame the conversation in terms
of resegementation. "For users who want X we will have the best phone, and
this will mean that we can grow and build as the third largest platform."

~~~
corry
Good point about re-segmentation. They have to define the category in which
they compete such that they are #1 (classic '22 Immutable Laws of Marketing').

Part of the problem in the "we're aiming for #3" statement is that it's not
clear what is being measured. Profits/margin? Product leadership? Handsets
shipped?

------
corin_
> _Android powered 68% of the phones that shipped that quarter. Apple’s iOS
> platform ran on 17%. Those two numbers add up to 85%, so setting your goal
> to become the “number three platform” means you’re targeting 15% of the
> market._

That's... not true. Trying to be #3 doesn't mean you say "OK, we won't get any
customers from the first two, so all we have left are that 15%" it just means
you don't think you can take enough of their customers to overtake them.

And to people saying it's bad for company moral... it really isn't. Very few
companies can be #1 or #2 in their industry, and for everyone to think
otherwise is more often than not just delusional.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
> Very few companies can be #1 or #2 in their industry

Most industries aren't in winner-take-all markets with huge network effects.

~~~
erikj54
> winner-take-all markets with huge network effects

I'm not sure what that statement means. It is not winner takes all, with your
logic there is only room for 1? Mobile is a growing market, if you think there
is no room for competition your betting either Apple or Android will be the
only platform.

~~~
goldfeld
He means the network effects (in this case, the App stores) create a situation
of huge dominance of one player over the others. Apple was headed to that
position, but what happened was a whole new market of low-end smartphones
opened up, witch Android ate up. So you can think of it as a winner-takes-all
in the high end and another in the low. Of course competition should and will
happen (I have hopes on FirefoxOS), but in these markets the new player
usually storms in with domino network effects and pulls dominance to his side.
Technology is either you're rocketing up or dying a painful death, it's rarely
a healthy sustained competition.

------
officemonkey
The difference between the Blackberry my work gives me and my personal iPod
touch is staggering.

    
    
      * Web browser is pathetic.  
      * Pandora and Tunein apps are wonky. They stall for no reason, and turn on after you pause them.  
      * Kindle app is a pale imitation.  
      * Facebook app is so bad, you're better off using the mobile facebook on the web browser.
    

The only thing I _like_ about my Blackberry is the physical keyboard and the
email/text/bbm environment. It's clean, functional, and the best of breed...
for 2005.

RIM might be a big player on the international scene for a cheap smartphone
(especially if they do i18n right) but they're not going to recapture the
iPhone/Droid market without a major overhaul.

~~~
Zenst
The RIM service/backbone is as you say there email/bbm enviroment and why they
have not tried pushing those services out onto other platforms like iOS and
Android and WM7-8 is too me one of the biggest mistakes RIM has made in the
past 6 years. Competing is after all more than about going head on upon all
fronts, especialy when there skills and niche were in area's were they could
of competed per service upon those platforms and be earning alot more on the
service front than they are now and have kept the company at the forfront of
peoples minds publicly as well as fiscaly. They could of also made more money
by selling dedicated box's for corporate companies instead of offering
software than ran upon others as the only option, a whole area of expansion
they missed out upon and another area were they could of made great grounds
and added another foothold into company affairs. I do wonder that if RIM had
released nothing new over the past 6 years if they would be any worse of than
they are now and that in itself is perhaps the most worrying aspect about were
they are now. Maybe now they plan to attain a position which is were they
already currently are from what I can tell, then perhaps things can start
looking up. They will survive, but in what form over time is upto them. They
may start becoming a cheap option for Facebook to move into other mobile
revenues and that in itself for most Blackberry users would probably be
recieved by mixed feelings.

In a World were a qwerty keyboard is needed RIM do the job, but we live in a
World that has moved on from the calculator device mentality and today a
pocket calculator has to make phone clalls organise the shopping and take the
picture for the front cover of Times magazine and if it does not then the fact
that it can still add and subtract and the like is completely ignored. But RIM
had and still have the opertunity to move there great email system as a
application onto other platforms and flourish nomater how well there handsets
sell and how small there margins upon those handsets get. There reliance upon
there own handsets to sell there services is one they need to break away from
and whilst it is late in the day they still have that opertunity, how much of
a risk would it be for them to take it.

------
wtvanhest
Is there anyone else that thinks that RIM could be the number one Andriod
seller if they incorporated their security and track pad in to a phone which
otherwise looks like a Galaxy?

I would buy that in a heart beat, and many corporations which haven't opened
up their security for iProducts would find their employees extremely receptive
to that device. They could be the #1 Andriod seller which would be quit a nice
position for them compared to today.

------
nanospider
Unfortunate the way it was said. Jobs said something similar but it sounds so
different:

"Apple's market share is bigger than BMW's or Mercedes's or Porsche's in the
automotive market. What's wrong with being BMW or Mercedes?"

Where the BMW/Mercedes could have been RIM's analogy to something in the
enterprise world.

------
brackin
In which case they need to have launched this product yesterday. Really they
should have a product on the market now considering Windows Phone 8 has had
their couple of years in the troff where they've been building the product,
the app ecosystem and carrier deals (As Android had to do) and are now really
pushing the OS with carriers like HTC and Nokia bringing out great hardware.

If they want to compete, sometime next year is not good enough in my opinion.
If they can build something compelling they'll be 4th if they just kept their
current customers on board with a new OS.

Blackberry already has touchscreen phones and the people using Blackberry's
seem to avoid them because they want to stay in that age with the physical
keyboards and classic handsets, if they do switch to QNX will people switch to
iOS or Android?

~~~
Toshio
That's an interesting perspective, but I don't think windowsphone (any
incarnation of it) has enough going for it to make number 3.

------
tici_88
If iOS has 17% of the market, having 12-15% is not something to be ashamed of.
It still represents billions upon billions of business every year.

Sometimes its better to set realistic but achievable goals than to aim for the
sky and flop.

------
Gustomaximus
Good luck to them but I just can't see this happening.

1) I worked with their app store previously. It was a nightmare so I see
hurdles building this asset.

2) The mobile environment is being increasing linked to the desktop/home
environments and other on cloud services for the best experience and they
don't have a great foothold here.

3) The business sector has largely let them go now. A few years back they
could have used this as a strong launching platform but this advantage has
gone.

On the other hand the interface looked cool and they could trump everything if
this is coupled with reasonable hardware.

~~~
macspoofing
>I worked with their app store previously. It was a nightmare so I see hurdles
building this asse

We've published an app on the Playbook market and the experience was on par
with anything else out there.

------
rbanffy
RIM's management fails to see they don't sell phones. They sell enterprise
communication. Or they used to, before BYOD happened.

Never confuse the boxes being moved with your business.

Either they embrace BYOD and convert themselves into mostly a
software/services company (maybe with a full-stack hardware/sopftware option),
or they risk becoming a cautionary tale.

------
asanwal
Nothing gets a team motivated like aspiring to be the #3 player in a market,
right? Pragmatic perhaps but this messaging would seem to be pretty
demotivating.

~~~
dagw
I wonder if it's a culture thing. I had an American boss a few years ago who
loved to call meetings and give 'inspiring' speeches a long the lines of: "Who
here wants to be bigger than Microsoft? Who here wants to beat Microsoft? If
we really work on hard this we can take on Microsoft at their own game! And
Win! So Go Team Go And Let's Kick Ass!!!"

The end result was a room full of people scratching their heads and thinking
"wow that was stupid", and being generally demotivated because they'd just
been set and obviously impossible task by a boss who obviously had no clue.
Had he given a speech along the lines of "we have a really unique and
interesting product here with strong potential of craving out a significant
piece of the market in a small but growing niche" people would probably have
left the meeting thinking "yea, we can really make that happen" and been much
more inspired.

------
erikj54
RIM still has quite a bit in cash reserves. Traditionally the haven't listened
to their users since they've been on top. They had the rug pulled out beneath
them and hopefully are starting to listen. I'm interested to see if BB10 can
really make a splash. I think aiming for #3 is a achievable goal. If they
become a true #3, I wouldn't be surprised if some loyal customers coming back
if BB10 works.

------
zachinglis
Reach for the stars, RIM. Reach for the stars!

~~~
freyr
"We're number three! We're number three!"

------
jpswade
RIM need to go open and utilise the crowd if they have any chance of keeping
up with Google and Apple.

------
snogglethorpe
"Guys? Guys?! Hey...c'mon, I was just kidding ... #9 is totally cool too! ...
.. . Guys?"

------
jpswade
I keep expecting Dell or HP to buy RIM and merge with Yahoo and Opera.

------
mtgx
RIM is already #3 in US from a platform standpoint. All they need to do is
stay there. Also, the BYOD trend may be strong, but RIM made some interesting
enterprise features for BB10 that the others don't have. Unless the others
quickly replicate those, I could see RIM have a shot in enterprise at least,
again.

~~~
Zenst
Those who migrated from RIM waited a few years for RIM to catch up, how long
do you think they will wait for there new choice to catch up.

RIM realy needed/needs to get a application version of its email service out
on androids/iOS as it is there services/key elements that make there platform
and if they do that then they will still make money nomater what platform
there services are run upon. Devices and services are two seperate markets
that intertwine and they need to embrace the competition and leverage what
they do best and upon those platforms before it is too late.

------
mparlane
Why not number one?

~~~
gnaffle
Why not number one plus? <http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20065265-17.html>

------
Toshio
I'm rooting for either one of BlackberryOS, FirefoxOS, Jolla or Tizen to be
the #3 mobile ecosystem.

