Tag Archives: RIM

General IT

Two simple steps for RIM to get back in the game

8 Comments

This month has seen the release of Blackberry 10, at least to the developer community. If that’s what RIM intend to release later in 2012 then I’m afraid we may be all bidding adieu to the familiar sight of Blackberry in Legal and beyond.There is no way that a touch screen OS from Blackberry will break the Android and iOS dominance, nor keep Windows Phone from being the #1 challenger to the top 2! These other three are slowly chipping away at the “risks” that ActiveSync technology supposedly brings compared to the BES infrastructure and a copycat OS isn’t going to save RIM.

The Blackberry wasn’t a successful business device because of a touchscreen, a big colour display, a large app store, browsing ability etc. No, the Blackberry was a success because it did two things very well. One, allowed me to make phonecalls and two, allowed me simple and quick access to my email. If RIM had stuck to what it did very well rather than chase the success of Apple then it could still be a player in the corporate world.

My business plan for RIM would have been:

One : The new Blackberry should have gone back to basics. Simple old style Blackberry handset with the keyboard that made composing and replying to emails so easy. Then replace the full colour display with a a Kindlesque e-ink display. This would allow the device to have a battery life that blitzed everything on the market (ever seen how long a WiFi Kindle can last!!). A lot of lawyers would love the basic functional aspect and being able to leave weeks without charging! It would be the perfect successor to the Nokia 6210 for a lot of lawyers.

An e-ink BlackBerry
An e-ink BlackBerry

Two: Focus BES on a management console for ALL smartphone devices. Embrace the security and risk fears of the personal device brigade and control it. There will always be those that want to use their iPhone or Windows Phone, they’ll never switch to a BlackBerry but from a corporate point of view you allow it and control it using the BES software. That way you’re in place to be the device provider for all those that want a functional device with outstanding battery life!

Two simple steps to get back in the game. Yes, for the smartphone loving crowd they’d never go basic e-ink device. But then they’d never swap their iOS, Android, WP7 handset for a Blackberry 10 handset either! Go colour touch screen RIM and we’ll be talking three players in the market in 2013.

Share
General IT

And the gold medal goes to Windows Phone

Leave a comment

The following was one of my 2012 predictions.

Windows Phone/Android/iPhone : Or more to the point, the death of the blackberry in Legal. After years of being the corporate tool of choice (remember when having a BB was a bit of a status symbol!!), RIM through major failure of service and also taking their eye off what they were really good at (email access) have gone the way of the fax machine. As for the replacement? Well the last two on the list are obvious, but I’m sticking my neck on the line and predicting the order as written! I’ll post up why I think this in an future post.

So Windows Phone as lead candidate to replace BlackBerry as the corporate smartphone of choice, am I mad?

Well no, I honestly think the new OS from Microsoft will make significant roads this year and shock the other two a little. Below are some of the reasons I think that it will position itself to be the enterprise device of choice:

  • Nokia – yes they may have fallen behind a little in recent years, but people still talk about them and they know how to build a phone. Regardless of the OS the new Lumia 800 is a extremely well built piece of kit! Plus they can market phones in a way that is second only to Apple.
  • Skype – sure this is available as an app for Android and the iPhone, but over the next year I expect to see closer integration with Windows Phone and more importantly closer integration with Lync. This will start to glue corporate telephony into Windows Phone and as Lync becomes the internal telephony platform of choice, Windows Phone becomes the natural choice for a law firms Unified Communications plan.
  • The enterprise marketplace – rumoured to be coming in the Apollo release of Windows Phone (due later in 2012) is the ability to create a private, secure private app marketplace. Allowing controlled distribution of applications to corporate devices or access to corporate applications to specific personal devices.
  • An obvious one, it’s Microsoft! And so is your corporate email (Exchange), your corporate intranet (SharePoint), your corporate engine room in legal (Office) and your corporate messaging/telephony (Lync). Do you not think they will all just work together seamlessly? Try using Windows Phone now with OneNote, SkyDrive and OneNote in Office 2010 to see how well this can work.
  • The original xbox case study – when the xbox was first released all the “gaming experts” said it was too late to the party and stood no chance against Sony and Nintendos offerings (PS2 and Gamecube). Ten years later and the xbox is THE games console and dominates the market. Sure Sony and Nintendo are still there with a healthy market share, but the 360 is the market leader. History has a tendency to repeat itself, what I saw in the original xbox I see now in Windows Phone.

And finally a bit of wild speculation?

Overall I don’t think Windows Phone will overtake Android or iPhone in market share in 2012, but I think by the end of the year it will be looking like a definite player in the market. And in the corporate world the knowledge and foothold that Microsoft has will give it prime position to take the crown from RIM.

Blackberry running Windows Phone OS?
Share