[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.)

[raganwald]

what kind of strategy is "We want to be #3"?

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."

[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.

[sjwright]

Microsoft should have bought RIM years ago and bundled their sharp enterprise focus into their Windows Phone strategy. Together they might have had a shot at being the bronze medal winners. Separately, they're on the way to winning the wooden spoon jointly with Bada and Maemo.

[Juuumanji]

Very well said.