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Whether RIM’s latest move is fuelled by the company’s huge drop in income or the non-stop battering it received for apparently helping set London on fire last summer, or both, we’ll never know. The facts are RIM’s ditching the cheap kiddy models to focus on the high-end power users that don’t set rubbish bins on fire out of boredom.
RIM’s CEO, Thorsten Heins, speaking after announcing RIM’s latest terrible set of financial numbers, said: “We believe that BlackBerry cannot succeed if we tried to be everybody’s darling and all things to all people. Therefore, we plan to build on our strength … we can do what we’re good at.”
Which means more of the expensive models in colours designed to complement a bespoke suit, and less of the disposable low-spec touchscreens for the youth of the world. We think.
Update: But despite the above signposts from the big boss, RIM’s Alec Saunders, the company’s vice president of developer relations, took to Twitter to say: “BlackBerry remarks were wrongly interpreted. We are not leaving the consumer market.” [Recombu]
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Yet most businesses I know of now are ditching blackberry for other solutions, partially fuelled by their big outage last year… so they’re effectively going to lose out on all markets
Surely the kiddy market is all they will have left once the grown ups, who can afford decent phones, desert them for iOS and Android. Lots of companies are operating BYOP schemes these days rather than spending money on corporate fleets of blackberrys.
Problem is the low-end models don’t make RIM any money. They can sell a hatfull of them and still not make any serious cash.
Well the high end one’s aren’t exactly bringing in much at the moment
I figure that the low end ones make their money in music sales and game downloads.
I think we can essentially conclude that, either with high end market or cheap-o phones, RIM and BlackBerry are screwed…
they seem to be betting the company on the BB10 QNX phones, but since it took them till Feb of this year to have E-mail on their QNX tablet I don’t hold out a lot of hope for it having a solid ecosystem at launch, which when you consider that the competition does, doesn’t bode well.
I have a horrible feeling this marks the rapid downward spiral of RIM, which would be a shame. I don’t like BlackBerrys, but at least they’re different from the slabphones we’ve all got now. Having a choice is always better than not.
But they do get marketshare out of it. Pity that they’re ecosystem just isn’t up to par with the rest to make the most of it.
RIM proceeds to hammer another nail into their own coffin, after the mess of the playbook and OS debacle they need users.
I can’t believe they are ditching the “kiddy” market! Clearly, RIM need to recruit a strategist – here’s a tip: hook ‘em early, hook ‘em for good. Not all companies work this way but boy does it work.
This is what Canon and Nikon have been doing for years. They have invested heavily on cheap SLRs aimed mainly at young amateurs in the hope that they create brand loyalty and stick with the brand. And once you have bought three-four lenses it’s hard and/or expensive to switch over.