The shares of Canada based Research In Motion dropped again, this time by 5% this Monday as the company attempted to make up for the disruption of its BlackBerry messaging services by offering its customers free applications and technical support in order to appease its disappointed users. Last week saw millions of BlackBerry users throughout the world without mobile email and other forms of instant messaging services for as many as four days after a malfunction at one of its data center based in England led to a disruption of services over five continents.
RIM is going to offer its customers free apps worth over $100 to its customers along with a whole month of technical support and service for its enterprise customers free of any charge, in hopes of retaining its BlackBerry users as the market share of the company was already declining even before the outage.
According to analysts, RIM quickly needs to repair all the damage that has been done to its global image after the disruption and also stem the losses that its corporate customers have suffered as it has led them to start questioning the reliability of the Canadian company’s services in the future. An analyst named Geoff Blaber said that even as RIM has been quick in responding, this will not undo all the damage which its reputation has suffered.
He said that although these steps can appease its customers, it is very important that such a situation doesn’t come up again in the future. The stock went 5% lower today on the Nasdaq, as the company continues its decline after it has already gone down by more than 60% this year.
The BlackBerry brand has lost its market share to the Apple iPhone and Google’s Android devices in the recent years. During the same time, it has also tried to penetrate deeper into the market than its core base of corporate firms, focusing especially on the younger customers and markets in emerging regions. Highlighting the challenges for RIM, Apple recently reported that it has already sold 4 million units of the iPhone 4S which was released just three days ago. The co-chief executive of RIM, Jim Balasillie, stated to the media that the company wants to make amends with its customers who have suffered during the outages.
November 11, 2011 at 12:35 am
RIM has strange culture. hard to fix.
In RIM if you figure out problem and introduce efficient approach, both manager and his buddy group member will proof their wrong approach works.
just like someone point out driving a car is right way, pushing a car is wrong way, then both manager and his buddy group member will hate you, and proof that 3 person can also move the car by pushing it.
This is one side of the strange culture, another side of RIM strange culture is like: because the manager and CEO are buddies as well , so people will say: yes, it is moving, pushing a car is really right way.
RIM is not system oriented company, just self-destruct small company buddy culture, with a fat body. it is very strange company culture and strange company political environment, RIM’s management may be a typical instance in MBA course.