When it comes to market share, RIM would certainly agree of the fallback they have faced in the last one year. What is still unclear is whether BlackBerry intentionally continued to remain what the market described as a stage of ‘stagnancy.’ While other mobile devices sales surged, RIM fell from a $78 billion dollar height in market to an exceedingly low $12 billion dollar mark.
Despite the severity of figures, the BlackBerry mobile still retained the top seventh position in the mobile market. Research analysts hold the view that following the introduction of BlackBerry, the niche market, majority of them being business executives, remained loyal. The question is whether RIM can afford to continue catering for a very select market. Given the popularity and competition from other mobile devices, it is highly unlikely. What is admirable is that they have continued to retain their identity rather than imitate the success. Again, this ‘lack of innovation’ has been viewed with criticism that RIM was afraid to fail, and perhaps the failure would be more obvious if they were to be compared with other similar advancement.
All or nothing
On the other hand, BlackBerry users have not complained. They are satisfied with the ‘push’ features of the Smartphone and praise it for its compatibility and fault-free services. It can be concluded that RIM has standards of perfection that have perhaps made them more unwilling to experiment.
The next few months look promising. BlackBerry 10 is being looked upon as the perfect business solution in mobile technology. Combining professionalism with entertainment, the OS 10 is expected to have all the merging capabilities with a smoother experience than any other mobile platform. Its apps are also expected to exceed all others in the market. Its open source technology will allow developers not to just focus on data, but design as well. The one drawback, although it us yet to be ascertained, is that it will not support Java applications and therefore the previous versions will not be compatible with BlackBerry OS 10.
Designer BlackBerry
As if to stress their exclusivity point further, BlackBerry recently partnered with Porsche to bring out the BlackBerry Porsche Design P’9981 Smartphone. The model is more exclusive than its other editions. Although reviewers have praised the exterior more with their typical QWERTY keyboard, it is the software features that are predicted will mark its future success, namely the ‘user friendly’ performance and useful apps such as the Wikitude World Browser app.
BlackBerry Mobile Fusion
Mobile management is a relatively broad term that BlackBerry has used by synchronizing mobile applications with the BlackBerry Playbook tablet and desktop features to a ‘single point of control,’ which is a combination of the BlackBerry Devices Services, the latest addition of the Universal Device Service and the studio app. Especially suited for the IT department of companies, the fusion is considered to be user-friendly within the business environment.
With all this and recent partnerships with tinyHippos, Jaycut and Paratek, it is still early and difficult to predict BlackBerry and RIM’s future in the market. Analysts believe it depends entirely on just how RIM will use their market strategies, that is, whether they will choose to continue holding the niche customers, or take on a more aggressive share of the market.