In the last two-three years, RIM has seen a large exodus of consumers to Apple and Samsung phones. Consumers found Blackberry lacking terms of battery life, apps, smart UI and speed. Also, the random outages and more incidents of frozen phones just destroyed trust in the eyes of the user. Some even complained about the distracting red light on the top of the handset. All this for a company that once boasted of 22 million users in the U.S. itself and many more worldwide. Blackberry virtually created the concept of secure emailing on the go, and instant messaging over Blackberry Messenger. But, other companies came along and changed the game with advanced features that RIM couldn’t keep up with.
The downfall has seen several changes within the Canadian tech company. The most important one is the replacement of co-founders Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie in favor of Operations Chief Thorston Heins. Under Heins’ leadership the company has created Blackberry 10, a new and starkly different operating system. Heins is going to release two new Blackberry devices on Wednesday that will run on the new OS. One of these will come with Blackberry’s signature QWERTY keyboard and the other will be only touchscreen. A lot of hopes are pegged on to the success of this operating system – one that is seen as the make-or-break product for RIM. Most importantly, it must be able to convince the enterprise market.
Blackberry initially rose to fame when Wall Streeter adopted it. It’s easy to imagine a typical high-power workaholic excited by convenient access to 24-hour email. Even as Apple and Android-based phones started gaining momentum, Blackberry was seen as a superior device at work. However, that last changed now as RIM loses more and more corporate/government agency contracts. Some key clients that have broken up with Blackberry include the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the US National Transportation and Safety Board and the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency.
The only way RIM will be able to make up for its current diminutive share of 9 million U.S. customers is by restoring and maintaining the faith of enterprise. Apple traditionally doesn’t pitch to businesses and professional network admins find Android’s community-based fragmented system hard to control, so large organizations are the best space for RIM. If BB 10 also fails there, the company could be looking at a sale of its handset business or being broken up for the worth of its patents.
