Canadian beleaguered company – Research In Motion (RIM), makers of BlackBerry smartphones and Playbook tablets, has reported a net loss of $125 million, or 24 cents a share, for its fourth quarter. Despite its management overhaul, RIM has been unsuccessful so far to reverse its fortunes, which are turning from bad to worse. The company seemed to have admitted defeat in the smartphone wars after suggesting it will abandon most consumer markets.
RIM has decided to return its focus to its corporate customers after failing to compete with flashier, consumer-oriented phones.RIM will concentrate on reaching business customers, who are said to value the security of the company’s handsets. RIM says it will focus its consumer efforts on targeted offerings that tap the company’s strengths and will explore partnerships and other opportunities for consumer products that aren’t deemed central.
RIM has been struggling as Americans are abandoning their BlackBerrys for flashier touch-screen phones such as Apple’s iPhone and models that run Google’s Android software.
Despite the phone’s continuing popularity among business users, the firm has had limited success trying to enter consumer markets in recent years.“We plan to refocus on the enterprise business and capitalize on our leading position in this segment,” CEO Thorsten Heins 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.”
As blogged by us earlier, there is no logic for RIM to introduce one smartphone after another on its proprietary operating system. It cannot compete with open end Android operating system. In order to be competitive and to remain afloat, its new management will have to do lot of brain storming and think out of the box. If RIM wants to compete with flashy smartphones then it will have to open its hardware for Android platform as its hardware is one of the best.
It will be wise step for the company to keep their business customers intact and refocus their energies to serve their requirements lest they are also poached by other vendors.
