RIM, Out

Research In Motion will soon end its story. Within the next year or so, they will be bought, and the product line will join the host company - most likely Microsoft, and they will follow the path of Nokia, Danger and other countless mobile platforms. Having existed independently for some time, they will still be absorbed. Its end.

And that's why.
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Today there is no money in the market of "business" phones. Blackberry are not status symbols. They are only the mobile equivalent of large, thick business laptops that are still issued in some IT departments of American companies. They are staid, boring and restless, but people are still ground to them and to e-mail, to work with which these devices are still suitable. This is where it ends.


These phones are increasingly being replaced by newer and more popular devices on iOS and Android. Today, no one will be fired for installing BES , but you can be sure that if RIM does not start supporting WebDAV standards in the near future, then they will begin to refuse it en masse.

You can earn a lot of money by selling iron to a crowd of customers - you can be sure of this. But when they start saving, refusing to pay money for devices, where will all these consumers go? On the same platform to which they were tied all these years?

The BlackBerry audience is already gone. I remember how several years ago I was invited to MTV (and never called again) to talk about “top smartphones”. I think it was in 2007. The list included devices on Windows Mobile - the new Sidekick and, unexpectedly, the BlackBerry Curve . The result of the study was that the Sidekick easily defeated almost all competitive devices, but what I can’t understand is how Curve, with all its advantages, fell into this list. Sidekick is a device for lifestyle and the same can be considered even HTC Dash on WinMo. But Curve? Never.

RIM still has an audience, but this audience is constantly shrinking. One can argue that lately their business is not going very well, but even if this is true - there are a huge number of other manufacturers on the market - now including Microsoft - that are much more attractive from a general point of view. Even BBM no longer sounds tempting, especially in the era of Facetime, Qik and Hipchat.

As for rivals RIM, they are stronger and faster. Android has already taken the lead, and iOS is closely behind in the global market. If there are any collisions between them, then RIM always remains in third place with a decent lag. I would even say that Windows Phone will be a more attractive business solution for which RIM has nothing to offer. What can a company do to get out of this deadly corkscrew? Start producing consumer (that is, for the general mass of buyers) phones? No, already tried . Maybe new business phones? No, already tried . Release the tablet? No, no . Which brings us to the following point:

They lost the tablet race. Totally. RIM today believes that they will be able to sell 800,000 Playbook, with an initial market estimate of 2.4 million. Even if every Blackberry owner will be required to buy a Playbook because of corporate policy, but they probably won't even be able to sell them in such quantities.

Playbook is a beautiful, well-coordinated device. But it is too late, and too inconvenient for the average user / buyer. The biggest mistake? RIM failed to provide each buyer with a native e-mail out of the box. So, briefly and concisely. The loudest name in the world of email devices cannot provide you with email.

No matter what they change - they will not change the past. Look at the video below, where the Nokia manager shows the performance of Meego on one of the company's latest smartphones. Looks good?



But it is not. And it will never see daylight, and all the work spent on building a mobile OS and screwing the interface to it will soon be lost. Why? Because it is too late and too little. Nokia, the giant of the mobile industry, today exists only in the form of a shell of its own great past. RIM can, and most likely will, go the same way.

The fate of RIM is written in large letters on every corner in this world. Each large corporate mobile system is sharpened by their system, but now they are slaves of their own success. They can not sell anything other than devices with a full-sized keyboard at a time when the value of the keyboard is constantly decreasing or it is hidden until it is needed. Lack of imagination on the consumer and producer side is their course. In a world where every phone is smart and can work with e-mail, there is no reason to recommend RIM instead of another phone. Everything is over and now we are just waiting for interesting offers to buy one of the greatest mobile companies in modern history.