RIM CEO: We want to be the number three platform on the market
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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.)
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.
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.
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.
It is not a strategy. It is a futile attempt to make it sound like they have a strategy. In most businesses, there is a natural market for #2. Somebody, somewhere, wants to be different. Somebody, somewhere, is offended by #1's size. Somebody, somewhere, finds #1's product too bland and watered-down for the masses. There will always be a Pepsi for every Coke.
The trouble with trying to be #3 is that even in saying it, you're talking about going after #1's market. And you will lose to #1 and #2 so huge that you'll be bankrupt.
The right way to be #3 in smartphones is to be #1 in education, or #1 in the 10-12 adolescent market, or #1 in the handheld gaming market, or #1 in the dweebs-who-use-Linux-on-their-phones market, or what-have-you.
This was detailed decades ago in Reis & Trout's "Marketing Warfare" book. There are four strategies:
- Defence (#1 in the market)
- Offence (#2 in the market)
- Flanking (Disrupt the market through an indirect approach)
- Guerilla (Dominate a niche market)
Nowhere in this list do you find "Lose the major market to the Offence and Defensive players."
Picking an achievable goal vs. promising an unachievable one is better for morale of everyone involved IMO.
But just keeping the footing they have now, is not a bad plan of attack. But as you say, he is being realistic and that is something refreshing and reasuring for a CEO and in that I wish them well.
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?
Realistic, ambitious, and entirely positive.
When you can't win the game, change the game to one you can win. The trick is making sure it's still one worth playing.
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.
Most industries aren't in 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.
* 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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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?
Sometimes its better to set realistic but achievable goals than to aim for the sky and flop.
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.
We've published an app on the Playbook market and the experience was on par with anything else out there.
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.
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.
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.