Blackberry leaving the consumer market

gjchester

http://www.reghardware.com/2012/03/30/rim_blackberry_to_exit_the_consumer_phone_market/

RIM,the makers of blackberry will be leaving the consumer side and concentrating on business. That means no new consumer blackberry phones and the ones they will make will be more business friendly.

Not sure how it will pan out, many corporate types now use apple and android phones as advances in email replication means it can be done securely, and people don't like carrying multiple phones.

Tony5101

I think that RIM lost their niche when they tried to diversify.
Unfortunately, it seems that they should have stuck to what they were good at, as it now seems that other players have moved onto their "patch" while they lost their way.
The recent high profile outages did them no favours either.
Shame really, as they do offer a good business product, but I think that they might soon be relegated to the "also ran" division.

Esqui

Experience has warned me off Blackberries. They are (according to my OH) really difficult to set up with internet services, and the experience of battling to get Playbooks fixed - they will only talk to the customer, not me at the store - has left a bitter taste

NFH

Although the popularity of Blackberry amongst schoolchildren was well publicised during last August's riots, I heard that schoolchildren are already switching in large numbers from Blackberry to iPhone, which is going to support the resale value of secondhand iPhones.

Not only that, but many corporates are making a similar switch, helped by apps like Good for Enterprise, which allows workers to use their own devices.

lcharm

I remember about 6 years ago when I took my first professional job after Uni, all the senior execs of the company had Blackberry phones and I'd never heard of them until then. It was the phone to get if you are a jetset high flying business executive. If you had a Blackberry at work, you were more than likey an important person!

I agree that they screwed things up by trying to diversify

OneADay

Might as well pack it in completely - corporates won't want to know about BB when they can get everything needed from ordinary phones which their employees already own themselves.

NFH

OneADay wrote: »

Might as well pack it in completely - corporates won't want to know about BB when they can get everything needed from ordinary phones which their employees already own themselves.

Exactly, and there's a massive cost saving. They can consequently afford to give remote e-mail access to everyone who has their own smartphone, rather than restricting it to those who have a strong business need.

cgk1

The only problem is... this story isn't true, a number of news agencies (including the guardian) has to publish retractions - RIM will still be turning consumer products but they are going to get partners to provide things like media stores.

Guys_Dad

I knew someone who worked on the Blackberry roll out back many years ago. Blackberry handsets were always aimed at business and corporate emails. My team set up an early BES server for our company. Their original claim to fame was having push email.

I never understood why the consumer market took to them as they never had the appeal of other smartphones with the 3 alternative operating systems - 4 if you count Symbian.

I am not surprised, therefore, that they are re-focusing their current products on the corporate market. But I do not blame them for responding to the consumer-led demand for their handsets before Iphones and Androids really took hold. I can't see what they did wrong by making a few bob when consumers wanted to copy the jet set brigade that Icharm mentioned.

But I do think that business technology has moved on from simply push corporate email. Now, the jet set execs need other facilities provided by Iphones and Androids and I am sorry to say that, unless RIM find some killer technologies to wrestle their market share back, they will follow previous technology giants such as Visicalc, CP/M, Alta Vista, Novell, Netscape ICL etc into obscurity.

lionelator

As someone else said, RIM has clarified it is not leaving the consumer market. Twas a stupid statement made though by the new CEO.
Id happily move away from BlackBerry if any other phone matched its features and functionality.
Since nothing else does, I have to stay with them. The only thing Im missing from other platforms is VOIP and video chat.
Im not heavy into media on my phone, but my 9900/PlayBook combo is pretty good for my needs at present, apart from VOIP and video chat. Im far more productive on it than I would be on any other platform.
Guess thats true for a few other people as well as they still have a massive customer base.

reehsetin

My belief is that their problem is churning out the same handset ever so slightly modified.Businesses have many other options and from a consumer POV the only thing that was unique was bbm and you can get a similar service from other providers now.