RIM will continue to focus on the consumer, despite what the media is saying.
You may have seen on more than one of the main news channels today details of RIM’s earning call last night. You may also have noticed that several of these channels, including the BBC, have stated that RIM say they are going to focus on the enterprise segment of the market and not the consumer.
Whoever wrote these articles clearly didn’t listen properly to the earnings call. These claims are totally misleading. Sure, Thorsten Heins did say that the company would re-focus on core strengths, including the enterprise customer base but he certainly didn’t say that they would not continue to support the consumer market. In many parts of the world the consumer market is where Research in Motion is strongest, including here in the UK. The BlackBerry Curve 8520 has been hugely successful and continues to be.
One thing that Thorsten also said, which the bigger media channels didn’t pick up on, was that RIM would be bringing new low end devices to market within weeks. If this is the case how on earth can RIM not be focusing on the consumer!
These new low end handsets will be targeted at two types of consumer. Firstly, people moving from a feature phone to their first smartphone, and secondly the devices will provide a low cost upgrade for current BlackBerry Curve 8520 users. Although the devices themselves have not been officially announced we saw leaks a while ago of the BlackBerry Curve 9220 and 9230 and if these are in fact the successors to the 8520 RIM should succeed in retaining, and if not grow, their share of the low end smartphone market.
Thorsten Heins stated on the earnings call yesterday evening:
· Whilst we announced we would refocus on the enterprise business, we also stated part of competing in the ‘bring your own device’ segment is to create a compelling consumer offering.
· Ahead of the BlackBerry 10 launch and throughout the remainder of our FY13, it is critical that we drive BlackBerry 7 sales to sustain the subscriber base. To do this we plan to aggressively incentivize sales of BlackBerry 7 smartphones to both drive upgrades from older BlackBerry products to BlackBerry 7 and to attract feature phone customers to BlackBerry 7 for their first smartphone experience.
· We have new BlackBerry 7 devices scheduled to come out in the next few months to reinvigorate our position in the key entry level smartphone segment, to support our efforts to continue growing our subscriber base by upgrading feature phone customers to smartphones.
· We . will seek partnerships to deliver those consumer features and content that are not central to the BlackBerry value proposition, for example media consumption applications.
Posted by: James
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