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I actually think this strategy is a bad one for RIM. You aren't going to beat Apple at its own game (UX/consumer market), you need to change the dynamics of the

I actually think this strategy is a bad one for RIM. You aren't going to beat Apple at its own game (UX/consumer market), you need to change the dynamics of the engagement. One area that RIM/Blackberry is still king is the enterprise. Apple hasn't even attempted to enter this market, for good reason. I think a viable - although controversial - strategy would be to simplify the offering and the company into a provider of enterprise communications devices. Beef up BES based on customer feedback, pull all blackberries from consumer shelves (i.e. Joe public can't buy one), focus on owning the market for devices with large organizations that provide phones to their staff as a cost of business. Expand into high security, high risk areas like the military and government (Obama doesn't have an iPhone, does he?). This would also have the effect making owning a blackberry a sign that you are an "elite member of a large group that can afford them", like it was in the later 90's. Owning a blackberry has no cache anymore, because any 16 year old can go buy a pink curve and look as cool as you do. This is the exact opposite of what this exec is looking for, but in the end will make for a stronger (although smaller) RIM, I believe. The strategy suggested by the exec is a recipe for disaster.

elehack 15y ago
Focusing on professional-only also has substantial difficulties. Will employees want to carry 2 phones, or will they want to be able to use their consumer smartphone for business as well? If they had and learned an iPhone or Android device, will they want to learn a new platform for their business phone, or will they prefer to use one like they already know?
- run4yourlives 15y ago
  I didn't say it would be a cakewalk... I said it's preferable to trying to beat Apple at a game they are champions at. It's like trying to win a war against the US by building a better air force...
- ebiester 15y ago
  The target market wants one phone. However, the target market doesn't care about the same things that the iPhone or Android delivers. They may want a game or three, but the emphasis is not the same. People attracted to blackberries are not the type of people that are going to care about having the latest graphics. Long battery life, a good web experience, and a good enterprise experience is something nobody else is doing. Mind you, RIM could build on android and provide the same thing...
  - ugh 15y ago
    A good web experience?!
    - ebiester 15y ago
      I was unclear. I'm talking about combining the three. Blackberry doesn't currently have a good web experience,
- Apocryphon 15y ago
  Well, one would hope that these professionals need fancy high-security/advanced enterprise features more than they want to play Angry Birds or snap pictures at the office party. But then recent news would show that "elite VIP types" don't practice a lot of discretion with their phones to begin with.
chime 15y ago
> One area that RIM/Blackberry is still king is the enterprise. Apple hasn't even attempted to enter this market, for good reason. I setup hosted Exchange via RackSpace for my client (a Pharma manufacturer) and their managers/exec-team use iPhone to sync their email, calendar, and contacts. BES has lots of neat features but none of my users need anything beyond the basics that iPhone offers. I don't see any reason to switch from Apple to RIM products.
- run4yourlives 15y ago
  That's because you're not running the business. BES is not about sync, it's about security, and for an enterprise, it is in a class of its own. I recognize that not everyone (and virtually no one here on HN I'm sure) sees the things that BES offers as important, or even desirable, but I can tell you that there is a huge market for them.
  - westajay 15y ago
    BES is yet another piece of software to manage if you are a mail administrator, and it is a pretty complex beast at that. You can have just as secure a sync solution with straight iphone/exchange by using Exchange Activesync with a VPN client, and you don't have the overhead of managing a BES install.
    - run4yourlives 15y ago
      I don't think you are understanding my point. Nobody gives a damn what the Mail Administrator thinks. The auditors see "BES" and move to the next item, they see your custom made solution and go "WTF is that? Not in the manual == Security Risk!!!11"
      - westajay 15y ago
        I've performed some of those audits, and that was not my response.
  - ryanhuff 15y ago
dpark 15y ago
Artificially restricting themselves to only corporate and government users would be a terrible move. They would still bear nearly 100% of their current costs, but have access to maybe 10 or 20% of their current market. This is a recipe for disaster. Being "corp and govt only" has no meaningful exclusivity. It's not elite. It's just bureaucratic. No one lusts after overpriced government-contract devices. And certainly very few people want to carry both a corporate and a personal phone. Those who do will probably like the Blackberry less, as it becomes a symbol of inconvenience, and as it's constantly compared to their latest iOS/Android device History has shown that general-use technology eventually wins over niche technology. How many companies are running Alpha chips these days? SGI workstations? Sparc servers? The niche players lost as the mainstream passed them by. Intel processors ended up crushing the dedicated "corporate" processors, because the mainstream market could support larger R&D efforts and provided a volume that allowed a far superior price/performance ratio. Ditto with nVidia. This is a story that's played out the same way again and again. The niche player loses unless it can deliver (and continue to deliver) significant value beyond what the mainstream players can provide. No one cares if there's an "elite" status to owning a rack of Alpha processors when a rack of Pentium 3 chips can do the same job for a quarter of the price. Also, Apple and Android are both making significant headway into the corporate environment, as employees tire of carrying two phones or being limited to a Blackberry device. Even in companies where Blackberry is the only "supported" device, they often give employees access to Exchange on their personal devices. If employees use their personal iPhones rather than receive a corp-provided Blackberry, that's a loss for RIM (and arguably a gain for the corporation, as they don't have to pick up the tab for another corp phone).
- forensic 15y ago
  You're just being pessimistic. The question is not "What is the future of mobile computing?" The question is "How does RIM make as much money as possible with their resources?" RIM can't compete on merit, so their best strategy is to do what they've always done: use aggressive, obnoxious sales strategies to place BlackBerries as the "enterprise" device and the only "respectable and secure" enterprise device. Many lame executive types are very very concerned with appearing respectable and adult and elite or whatever, and will use inferior products to maintain this image. They are doing it right now with BlackBerries. The standard East Coast enterprise opinion toward iPhones has been that they are "toys" for children and plebs, while BlackBerries are serious work tools for rich and important executives. BlackBerry cannot compete on fundamentals, but it can compete on image, exclusivity, and keep targeting luddites such as people who refuse to use Apple products because they are "pretty". These people love the ugly, hard to use BlackBerry, because the ugliness and crappiness itself is a statement about their values.
gnaffle 15y ago
While I agree that trying to challenge Apple is a mistake, the problem with your suggestion is that Apple _already_ has entered the enterprise market. Big Fortune 500 companies are rolling out iPhones and iPads because enterprise employees want them, and they meet the list of required enterprise features: Exchange support, remote provisioning and app deployment, VPN, remote/incorrect PIN wipe and encrypted storage. That and a rich app ecosystem covers 90% of enterprise usage. Unless BB offers truly unique, compelling features that employees _want_, you're only going to come off as the sad employee that has to use the crappy clunky phone that you got from work rather than an elite member of tha BB gang. If they manage to make a great phone that employees want, they might as well sell them as upmarket consumer phones as well. But as you said, I don't think they'll succeed in competing in that space, so I think the ship has sailed. To make an analogy, Apple could have decided to focus exclusively on shipping Macs for media professionals and education, where they had the biggest user base in 1997. However, had they not come up with products that were unique and compelling in the PC, music player and mobile markets, they would never have had the success they've had. Instead, they might have ended up like SGI.
redthrowaway 15y ago
Why would you want to limit their market? Enterprise bought into BB in the early days because there really wasn't anything else like it. It made sense, and worked for their employees. Now, however, every phone out there has a decent email system, and they're good phones as well. If you're trying to limit BBs to only enterprise, and saying that they don't need to be great consumer devices, then you'll be asking employees to carry two phones. They won't. Even if BB is better for enterprise, nobody is going to implement it alongside consumer smartphones.
- run4yourlives 15y ago
  Why would you want to limit their market? Because right now, trying to be everything to everyone is proving to be a losing strategy. This whole "nobody's going to carry two phones" argument is clearly being made by people that haven't worked with larger corporations, or the people in them. You're perfectly right that they won't carry two phones... they'll just carry their free, company supplied blackberries.
  - gnaffle 15y ago
    I've worked with one large corporation (30K employees). This corporation went from HTC WM6 to HTC Android phones, with an option that employees could buy their own iPhone / iPad and use it on the condition that it is set up by the IT staff with proper security settings. From what I can see they have a lot of iPhones and iPads there. People considering an iPod Touch might think twice if the company allows an iPhone. I agree that they need to narrow their focus, but I don't see how they can differentiate in the enterprise market in a way that will make them own that market.
  - redthrowaway 15y ago
    RIM losing the smartphone market is not an argument for producing an enterprise-only psuedophone. You need to provide an argument as to why your suggestion is the best course of action, rather than simply saying "it's the most different from what they're doing right now." Making footballs would also be different, but not in a good way. I think your proposal would be disastrous, for the reasons I specified. That doesn't mean I think their current strategy will work.

elehack 15y ago

Focusing on professional-only also has substantial difficulties. Will employees want to carry 2 phones, or will they want to be able to use their consumer smartphone for business as well? If they had and learned an iPhone or Android device, will they want to learn a new platform for their business phone, or will they prefer to use one like they already know?

run4yourlives 15y ago
I didn't say it would be a cakewalk... I said it's preferable to trying to beat Apple at a game they are champions at. It's like trying to win a war against the US by building a better air force...
ebiester 15y ago
The target market wants one phone. However, the target market doesn't care about the same things that the iPhone or Android delivers. They may want a game or three, but the emphasis is not the same. People attracted to blackberries are not the type of people that are going to care about having the latest graphics. Long battery life, a good web experience, and a good enterprise experience is something nobody else is doing. Mind you, RIM could build on android and provide the same thing...
- ugh 15y ago
  A good web experience?!
  - ebiester 15y ago
    I was unclear. I'm talking about combining the three. Blackberry doesn't currently have a good web experience,
Apocryphon 15y ago
Well, one would hope that these professionals need fancy high-security/advanced enterprise features more than they want to play Angry Birds or snap pictures at the office party. But then recent news would show that "elite VIP types" don't practice a lot of discretion with their phones to begin with.

chime 15y ago

> One area that RIM/Blackberry is still king is the enterprise. Apple hasn't even attempted to enter this market, for good reason. I setup hosted Exchange via RackSpace for my client (a Pharma manufacturer) and their managers/exec-team use iPhone to sync their email, calendar, and contacts. BES has lots of neat features but none of my users need anything beyond the basics that iPhone offers. I don't see any reason to switch from Apple to RIM products.

run4yourlives 15y ago
That's because you're not running the business. BES is not about sync, it's about security, and for an enterprise, it is in a class of its own. I recognize that not everyone (and virtually no one here on HN I'm sure) sees the things that BES offers as important, or even desirable, but I can tell you that there is a huge market for them.
- westajay 15y ago
  BES is yet another piece of software to manage if you are a mail administrator, and it is a pretty complex beast at that. You can have just as secure a sync solution with straight iphone/exchange by using Exchange Activesync with a VPN client, and you don't have the overhead of managing a BES install.
  - run4yourlives 15y ago
    I don't think you are understanding my point. Nobody gives a damn what the Mail Administrator thinks. The auditors see "BES" and move to the next item, they see your custom made solution and go "WTF is that? Not in the manual == Security Risk!!!11"
    - westajay 15y ago
      I've performed some of those audits, and that was not my response.
- ryanhuff 15y ago

dpark 15y ago

Artificially restricting themselves to only corporate and government users would be a terrible move. They would still bear nearly 100% of their current costs, but have access to maybe 10 or 20% of their current market. This is a recipe for disaster. Being "corp and govt only" has no meaningful exclusivity. It's not elite. It's just bureaucratic. No one lusts after overpriced government-contract devices. And certainly very few people want to carry both a corporate and a personal phone. Those who do will probably like the Blackberry less, as it becomes a symbol of inconvenience, and as it's constantly compared to their latest iOS/Android device History has shown that general-use technology eventually wins over niche technology. How many companies are running Alpha chips these days? SGI workstations? Sparc servers? The niche players lost as the mainstream passed them by. Intel processors ended up crushing the dedicated "corporate" processors, because the mainstream market could support larger R&D efforts and provided a volume that allowed a far superior price/performance ratio. Ditto with nVidia. This is a story that's played out the same way again and again. The niche player loses unless it can deliver (and continue to deliver) significant value beyond what the mainstream players can provide. No one cares if there's an "elite" status to owning a rack of Alpha processors when a rack of Pentium 3 chips can do the same job for a quarter of the price. Also, Apple and Android are both making significant headway into the corporate environment, as employees tire of carrying two phones or being limited to a Blackberry device. Even in companies where Blackberry is the only "supported" device, they often give employees access to Exchange on their personal devices. If employees use their personal iPhones rather than receive a corp-provided Blackberry, that's a loss for RIM (and arguably a gain for the corporation, as they don't have to pick up the tab for another corp phone).

forensic 15y ago
You're just being pessimistic. The question is not "What is the future of mobile computing?" The question is "How does RIM make as much money as possible with their resources?" RIM can't compete on merit, so their best strategy is to do what they've always done: use aggressive, obnoxious sales strategies to place BlackBerries as the "enterprise" device and the only "respectable and secure" enterprise device. Many lame executive types are very very concerned with appearing respectable and adult and elite or whatever, and will use inferior products to maintain this image. They are doing it right now with BlackBerries. The standard East Coast enterprise opinion toward iPhones has been that they are "toys" for children and plebs, while BlackBerries are serious work tools for rich and important executives. BlackBerry cannot compete on fundamentals, but it can compete on image, exclusivity, and keep targeting luddites such as people who refuse to use Apple products because they are "pretty". These people love the ugly, hard to use BlackBerry, because the ugliness and crappiness itself is a statement about their values.

gnaffle 15y ago

While I agree that trying to challenge Apple is a mistake, the problem with your suggestion is that Apple _already_ has entered the enterprise market. Big Fortune 500 companies are rolling out iPhones and iPads because enterprise employees want them, and they meet the list of required enterprise features: Exchange support, remote provisioning and app deployment, VPN, remote/incorrect PIN wipe and encrypted storage. That and a rich app ecosystem covers 90% of enterprise usage. Unless BB offers truly unique, compelling features that employees _want_, you're only going to come off as the sad employee that has to use the crappy clunky phone that you got from work rather than an elite member of tha BB gang. If they manage to make a great phone that employees want, they might as well sell them as upmarket consumer phones as well. But as you said, I don't think they'll succeed in competing in that space, so I think the ship has sailed. To make an analogy, Apple could have decided to focus exclusively on shipping Macs for media professionals and education, where they had the biggest user base in 1997. However, had they not come up with products that were unique and compelling in the PC, music player and mobile markets, they would never have had the success they've had. Instead, they might have ended up like SGI.

redthrowaway 15y ago

Why would you want to limit their market? Enterprise bought into BB in the early days because there really wasn't anything else like it. It made sense, and worked for their employees. Now, however, every phone out there has a decent email system, and they're good phones as well. If you're trying to limit BBs to only enterprise, and saying that they don't need to be great consumer devices, then you'll be asking employees to carry two phones. They won't. Even if BB is better for enterprise, nobody is going to implement it alongside consumer smartphones.

run4yourlives 15y ago
Why would you want to limit their market? Because right now, trying to be everything to everyone is proving to be a losing strategy. This whole "nobody's going to carry two phones" argument is clearly being made by people that haven't worked with larger corporations, or the people in them. You're perfectly right that they won't carry two phones... they'll just carry their free, company supplied blackberries.
- gnaffle 15y ago
  I've worked with one large corporation (30K employees). This corporation went from HTC WM6 to HTC Android phones, with an option that employees could buy their own iPhone / iPad and use it on the condition that it is set up by the IT staff with proper security settings. From what I can see they have a lot of iPhones and iPads there. People considering an iPod Touch might think twice if the company allows an iPhone. I agree that they need to narrow their focus, but I don't see how they can differentiate in the enterprise market in a way that will make them own that market.
- redthrowaway 15y ago
  RIM losing the smartphone market is not an argument for producing an enterprise-only psuedophone. You need to provide an argument as to why your suggestion is the best course of action, rather than simply saying "it's the most different from what they're doing right now." Making footballs would also be different, but not in a good way. I think your proposal would be disastrous, for the reasons I specified. That doesn't mean I think their current strategy will work.