So as a Canadian I was so proud of Research in Motion in the late 90's early millennium, everyone owned a BlackBerry and if you didn't you sucked. BlackBerry's were seen in parliament in office meetings in schools everywhere you looked everyone was chatting on a BlackBerry.

But then iOS came around and it started kicking the shit out of BlackBerry's market share. But everyone following the industry thought that RIM would release something new that would revitalize the market. But soon Android came and suddenly RIM's market share falls faster, then WindowsPhone7 and such. With all these new smart phones RIM's market share dropped to an all time low.

So RIM had a plan as soon as I-Pad was released BlackBerry announced PlayBook, they weren't about to let Apple make a tablet without competition. This year BlackBerry had intended to have sold 4-million PlayBook's in a year instead they sold 200,000 this quarter. Instead of a huge amount of phones they broke 10-million.

RIM intended to sell over 50-million phones this year and 4-million PlayBooks. However it looks like RIM will fail to meet those expectations drastically. In fact BlackBerry's newest phones have just launched with the new OS 7. RIM was hoping that the new OS would drive sales of BlackBerry's back to competent levels. However so far the new OS has not really sold butt loads.

So the question is can RIM dig itself out of this hole? What does RIM need to do to attract customers away from iOS and Android? Is their any chance of PlayBook becoming successful or will it go the way of the HP TouchPad? Do you think RIM could merge with someone or find a business partner that could help them make a comeback?

Is RIM doomed to die, or can they be saved?

Once again I am lead to believe that I live in a different parallel universe from a fellow VGChartz user. 

So tell me; have you guys managed nuclear fusion yet or is it also 'just around the corner' ?

Man Apple is murdering everyone except Google Android.

nope

To tell you the truth, they brought this on themselves. They'd have a lot more support if they just fixed their SDK. They have way too many screen sizes and no good way to develop between them. Their phones are very underpowered. And they ultimately failed to keep up with the times. They should have tried to partner with Microsoft with Windows Mobile 7, that would have saved them. Now Nokia has that deal. Like I feel bad for Rim cause they're a big company and a lot of people are going to loose their jobs within 5 years, but they're in this position because they're to stubborn to fix anything.

Where do you live in Waterloo?

Personally I'm not sure RIM is actually in as much trouble as it seems.

On the surface their marketshare is collapsing, however in reality I feel that it's because the smartphone market is expanding rapidly to general consumers but RIM is maintaining their hold on their core market of business consumers.

Businessmen still generally buy RIM phones, they're more secure and they're great at handling emails.

Yes, they are dead.

I give them about 10 years to become Palm.

The issue with the smartphone market is that RIM has lost its main differentiating advantage - as an elite phone for power business users - because of iOS and Android marketing to these people with a more robust feature set. Why buy a BlackBerry for anything but Enterprise? Its the same reason that cellphones killed the throw-away camera market... If offered a choice between a phone with great E-mail and little else, and a phone with good Email, turn-by-turn navigation, a nice camera, tons of apps, ect, ect, and other form factors... Why buy a BlackBerry?

Because of that, I can't see any major differentiation between its (better) comparables. iOS has iTunes and the Apple brand name, along with the massive catalog of the iTunes library for applications. Android has the form factor advantage, leaving RIM essentially with no major differentiators to John Q. Public.

RIM doesn't have the capital to face off its competitors in a long-term slugfest. Apple has the advantage of about 230 million devices out there and growing by about 20 million a month, with all the revenue supporting a better ecosystem. Android has multiple manufacturers piling lots of money into their sets, and an agnostic OS that ensures that the average person can get a phone that looks nice for whatever price and form factor they desire.

RIM should continue profitability for a few more years, and their handsets are slightly above since last year. However, their market share will continue to drop slightly until the carriers stop attempting to focus on their handset offerings. At that point, its the end game for RIM, which will be bad.

I hate to say it, but the only home RIM has is to look at scuttling the BlackBerry OS and mesh it with Android in some way. The market can't really support multiple OS types when the two major competitors have a huge lead with lots of cash. Its like the computer battle of the 1980's and early 90's. RIM is Commodore. WinMo is (arguably) Amiga. iOS is.....the Macintosh. Android is the Windows OS-based PC.

Really, if I was the CEO at RIM, I would give up the OS and piggyback Enterprise on an Android device, and then focus on one or at most two form factors, and iterate them each year. Samsung and Motorola have had great success doing this with the Droid series and the Galaxy series.

lives in Toronto now but I used to live in Waterloo. My parents still lives in Beechwood area. Fischer Hallman and Victoria is more 5 min from RIM building. You are speeding :)

OT: I agree that RIM will probably have the same fate as Palm. At least RIM is still profitable and has no debt. I wonder what will happen to Netflix now, the company can do no wrong for the last 2 years (kind of like RIM a few years back) and now suddenly in trouble. 

Netflix is a bit different of a beast.

In RIM's case, they had few major competitors and dominated the smartphone market between 2002 and 2008. iOS took out their game when it came to applications which allowed them to have far more business features than a piecemeal market place. When Android came out, it took their other market which was the fact they were *the* smart phone you could buy at every carrier in the US. So essentially both companies have taken what BlackBerry did, and made it much better....All without RIM reacting.

In Netflix's case, they've simply bungled everything possible. They took on streaming which is a fantastic idea, albiet with lots of hurdles. I understand the need to charge a different price for it, but the way they've handled it is abysmal. They should have explained that streaming costs were a totally different beast, and in order to keep adding new shows and channels, they had to charge more. I don't think people are PO'ed that they are charging more, but how they essentially went about it saying "Oh, your going to pay SO MUCH LESS NOW" and druming up their PR to allude to this fallacy. They now have a lot of ill-will with their customers, especially after totally separating the DVD mailers from the streaming, which were a huge boon to both businesses. They succeded together, now they will die separate deaths.