RIM - End of Days?
By Vivek | April 28th, 2008 at 10:03 pm ET
Yesterday, New York Times did a good job at hinting at future direction RIM is planning to take. Although nothing concrete, but still ideas around how RIM plans to compete with iPhone and Android. Coming to point - going forward, whatever RIM does, will it be enough for it to survive? I don’t really think so. Why?
- High Price Point - For long long time, RIM played an anti-consumer role with it’s $45/user/month data plan. Since there was no other option, consumers grudgingly paid for it. But that came at a cost. Even after being in the market for a long time, along with a sturdy device range, RIM failed to get mass market adoption. In the current scenario, I highly doubt RIM will get a second chance.
- Delayed WiFi & 3G - Had it not been for iPhone, RIM would have kept selling the toothless 2G handsets forever possible. In my opinion, RIM could technically have launched a WiFi enabled more then 2 years back, but choose not to do so for whatever reasons. Since the launch of 3G on RIM and iPhone is expected to happen almost simultaneously, it will be anyones guess which phone is going to sell more.
- Developer Community - Support from external developers for RIM handhelds is next to none. One reason can be attributed to the fact that RIM’s footprint in Europe is really small, which is the region with most mobile hackers. Yeah, RIM found support from Yahoo and Google, but that’s delivered only a handful of apps. Besides that, these are the days of iPhone SDK and Android, which means even lesser tailored apps for your blackberry.
- Music - How does RIM plan to compete with iTunes store? Trying to kick start one right now will lead to no where. Yeah, they can tie up with Napster or Real Player or Amazon, but that would never deliver the kind of tight device integration that iPhone offers.
- Apps - Right now, Google practically owns the web office. With launch of Android, RIM/Apple/Msft - all are going to have a tough time coming up with a comparable scalable offering.
On the whole, I fail to see what RIM can offer besides the push mail for a higher price. Hence, I expect a stagnation or dip in the RIM subscriber base by the year end. In the longer run(read 2-3 years), best bet for RIM is to be bought by Msft(if they have $$s left after digesting Yahoo).
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