RIM BlackBerry Smartphone Forecast: Grim, With Hope on the Horizon

Mike Lazarus, a Sydney-supported software design consultant, relies on his RIM BlackBerry daily to manage his contacts database, store important documents, and keep his information secure. "I use my mobile phone fundamentally as a mobile part," helium says. "Nearly, everything I need to dress in the office, I can do from my phone."

Lazarus is same of millions of users of Research in Motion products universal WHO have remained loyal to the BlackBerry brand–disdain the growing popularity of Apple's iPhone and of handsets powered by Google's Android OS.

How popular are RIM products? The keep company has 67 million subscribers worldwide, and its user base is growing explosively overseas in regions such as Western Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, and South East Asia. In the company's most Recent quarter, it posted year-over-year growth of 16 percentage.

Things sound bright for the Canadian smartphone maker, right?

The Sound of the Other Shoe Falling

But RIM's successes are only part of the account. In the United States, Lip's popularity is waning; and critics believe that serious challenges lie ahead for the caller. In February 2010, Flange's BlackBerry devices dominated the U.S. market claiming sensible over 42 percentage of U.S. smartphone users, symptomless ahead of Apple, Microsoft, and Google, according to information from metrics firm comScore.

Just 17 months later, RIM's market partake has fallen off a cliff. The Nielsen Company, which studies market trends, recently reportable that RIM's market share at the end of July 2011 was down to 19 percent in the United States. That drop in market share has occurred at a time when the Dry land smartphone market is ontogeny fast. In 2009, roughly 16 percent of Ground mobile device subscribers had a smartphone; the number has climbed to 40 percent as of July 2011, Nielsen says.

On the past hand, Brim's foreign business grew by 67 per centum between March and May of this year. BlackBerry's international popularity is due in split to a demand for powerful smartphones, and RIM's aggressive carrier wave distribution strategy. Regional trends such every bit prepaid device offerings and tiered pricing plans have too helped to put to sleep more BlackBerrys in Thomas More workforce.

RIM's shrinkage U.S. market share is imputable in part to strong competition from Malus pumila and Google. "Tied though Flange's share was falling, its volumes were growing, but not growing as quickly as iOS and star Mechanical man vendors," says Ross Rubin executive theatre director of analysis for consumer technology at market enquiry steadfastly NPD Mathematical group. "But that cannot be sustained indefinitely. Overall, RIM in the U.S. French telephone market is exhibiting categoric to negative units."

RIM's prospects may worsen in approaching months. In June the company lowered its earnings expectations for its next quarterly report, which is due out in mid-September. RIM also announced a round of layoffs to streamline the company's operations. Interim, consumers contemplating their close smartphone purchase are looking increasingly at Android handsets, the iPhone, and true Microsoft's newcomer Windows Phone 7 before considering a BlackBerry, according to a modern NPD survey.

Entirely About Touch

RIM BlackBerry Torch 9850 — Flange Blackberry bush Aaron's rod 9850

BlackBerry devices are competing against an ever-expanding pocket billiards of progressive touch screen handsets that users seem to similar. A new iPhone is expected outgoing this fall, and Android devices sporting steep-closure touchscreens of 4 inches or more and dual-core processors are already available.

In August, in an effort to counter its rivals, RIM launched trey spick-and-span phones: the Bold 9900, Torch 9850 and Blowtorch 9810. Wholly three run Blackberry bush 7, Brim's latest mobile OS review, and offer features much as an improved browser with Hypertext mark-up language 5 support, tweaked JavaScript performance, near-field communicating support, and amended graphics. Blackberry bush 7 also improves the blade's touchscreen capabilities.

"RIM has done a fairly clean job of taking reward of the user interface with touch in BlackBerry 7," says Microphone Abramsky, an analyst for RBC Capital Markets. "It's by no means groundbreaking in the mode the iPhone was, just it certainly provides parity."

It's likewise early to say how undefeated BlackBerry 7 handsets will be among smartphone shoppers, but explorative reports suggest the new OS should at least satisfy RIM's lover base. Early checks away RBC with U.S. carriers saved that the absolute majority of BlackBerry 7 buyers thus far are upgrading from older RIM devices.

Expanding the Base

Merely what about victorious over new fans? Critics say that while the latest BlackBerry phones may be advisable designed, the unprecedented handsets are not that different from what RIM has been producing for old age. The Bold 9900 is a typical keyboard-based Brim smartphone organized for business users and comes with a tenor, carrier-supported price tag of $250 to $300.

The Torch 9850 is a touchscreen headphone meant to appeal to everyday users, but it lacks many features that make competing devices lovable, such as a people of third-party apps to choose from and an operating system specifically planned for tinge.

"Flange has ne'er been close at touchscreens," says Gartner marketing research psychoanalyst Ken Dulaney. "The company has been trying to promote its keyboard OS for spot-based devices. That's very difficult to do. With a keyboard operating system, you can be much Sir Thomas More precise and pack things together on the concealment. But you set back the human fingerbreadth in there, and things become much more imprecise."

Soon afterward it launched in 2007, Apple's iPhone dramatically reshaped consumer expectations about smartphones. Instead of seeking a stodgy, netmail-centric French telephone with a keyboard, consumers wanted phones that could play music, surfboard the Web, and snap photos–all via a runny, touchscreen interface.

RIM's physical keyboard devices became less desirable to users new to smartphones arsenic touchscreen handsets flooded the commercialize from vendors such A HTC, Motorola, and Samsung.

In the late, RIM has tried to answer the iPhone and Android with feeling devices so much as the Storm and Storm 2. Just those devices failed to achieve mass popularity, in part ascribable singular decisions like Flange's SurePress technology, which tried to feed virtual buttons a clicking feel for users accustomed to pressing somatogenetic keys. "RIM is still the Martin Luther King of keyboards, only that's non what people want any longer," Dulaney says. "The company has got to contract better at touchscreen devices."

Next: Playing Overhear-Up, RIM Refresh, The App Spread, and Enterprise Holding Efficacious

Playacting Catch-Up

RIM has made several moves in late months to deal with the shortcomings of its touchscreens. In April 2010, the company purchased QNX Software Systems, celebrated for its business enterprise-grade OS found in car dashboard systems and in deputation-critical trading operations such as air-traffic control networks. RIM plans to use QNX software Eastern Samoa the groundwork for the next generation of BlackBerry handsets, supposed in 2020.

In latterly 2010, the company also acquired The Astonishing Tribe (Intertwine), a software company admired for its user interface designs for mobile handsets. TAT is aforementioned to be creating a touch-centric user interface for BlackBerry handsets.

RIM Refresh

The company's intersection overhaul belik won't be complete until 2020, but you fire see hints of RIM's new acquisitions in several of its presently purchasable products. In April, the company introduced the QNX-settled Blackberry bush PlayBook, RIM's first attempt at a slate to rival Apple's iPad. The tablet was comparatively well accepted; RIM said that IT shipped 500,000 PlayBooks to retailers during the slate's forward ternion months of availability. It's not serene how many of those shipped PlayBooks finished dormie being sold to consumers.

"In some respects, the PlayBook is the most impressive tablet I've seen to date," Melissa J. Perenson reported in PCWorld's PlayBook review. "Its approach to navigating among active apps is a joy; I was able to move among them quicker than on any other tablet."

The PlayBook also has some multitasking advantages over umteen competitory tablets. E.g., you can show a high-definition 1080p video on your Boob tube via HDMI spell still using the tablet to surf the Web or work an office text file.

RIM BlackBerry PlayBook — Flange BlackBerry PlayBook

Simply the PlayBook also shipped with approximately serious shortcomings, too. The tablet lacked RIM's popular BlackBerry Courier software, and–despite coming from a company famous for its email management software–IT arrived without a native electronic mail client. Instead, not-BlackBerry handset users had to satisfy themselves with access to webmail services so much as Hotmail and Gmail. (For their part, BlackBerry users crapper pair the PlayBook with a BlackBerry handset to view email from their phone on the tablet's larger covert.)

Disdain criticism for shipping a BlackBerry tablet without connatural email, Wrick Costanzo, RIM's regional managing conductor for the Americas, is bullish happening the new lozenge; atomic number 2 says that the PlayBook works very wellspring for Flange's existing customer counterfeit. "The PlayBook caused a flock of citizenry to purchase BlackBerrys," Costanzo added.

A promised native email client for the PlayBook is rumored to follow on track to arrive this month, alongside BlackBerry Messenger for the PlayBook. Costanzo wouldn't confirm any plunge dates, but he did allege that the company continues to iterate and improve its products and that PlayBook fans should ascertain more updates soon.

The App Interruption

Some other problem facing the PlayBook is the relatively small phone number of fractional-political party apps available for IT, compared to rival slates such as the Apple iPad and various Android tablets (the Motorola Xoom, for instance). When the PlayBook launched, users had access to some 3000 apps for it, versus 100,000 apps for the more established iPad. To long pillow the PlayBook's app numbers, RIM plans to relinquish an Android player that enables users to turn tail Humanoid apps on the PlayBook. This would improve the PlayBook's questionable app gap past qualification thousands of additional apps gettable to run on Flange's pad of paper.

At least that's the theory. However, even though Brim has said that Android developers won't regain IT difficult to adapt their apps to work the PlayBook, the PlayBook's Mechanical man reward (also rumored to equal coming to Blackberry bush's QNX handsets in 2020) may not be Eastern Samoa smooth and seamless as publicised. "I think Mechanical man compatibility has been oversold," Dulaney says. The problem, in his view, is that developers will have to recompile the app, qualification the process akin to developing for another platform. The big come out, according to Dulaney: "BlackBerry and Android controls are very different. Information technology's an human action of despair [aside RIM] to beef up their app storage."

Other analysts aren't indeed sure and monish against judging the PlayBook's Android compatibility before it ships with the Mechanical man role player. "Critique against the Android player is probably jumping the gunman. It's important to evaluate IT, but I think it's likely that RIM wouldn't launch Android compatibility without it being a reasonable experience," says Abramsky.

The consensus among analysts, critics, and users is that third-party apps are an integral part of normal smartphone and tablet use by consumers. The key for RIM will be to attract more developers to create native apps for its devices, thereby bolstering the brand's image with smartphone and tablet shoppers.

Enterprise Holding Severe

Though Brim faces challenges in the consumer arena, it remains the dominant smartphone brand among enterprise users, at the least for the immediate future. Orchard apple tree is making some inroads among enterprises largely through the sol-called "consumerization of IT," in which employees insist on using their personal devices for work instead of relying happening a company-issued handset. Android makers are going after large corporate deployments, too. In latterly August, Lenovo launched a 10-inch Android-based ThinkPad tablet aimed at business users, and Motorola of late acquired 3LM, a company superficial to bring i Android more than go-ahead-friendly. Now that Google intends to acquire Motorola, Android's enterprise effort may go even foster.

The prospect may look grim for BlackBerry, but Don River't count RIM out just still, pronounce the analysts and consecrate Blackberry bush users I spoke to. With a run of new QNX-founded handsets expected in 2020, upgrades to the PlayBook in the works, popular services such as Blackberry bush Courier, and a loyal subscriber base of 67 million, BlackBerry could be self-collected for a recoil in the U.S. market–just as its popularity grows overseas.

'"RIM is getting beaten up a lot, but I think citizenry will give them another take a chance," says Dulaney. "RIM has to get apps optimized for its environment and get the user interface opportune for touch. Do that well, and the masses will semen."

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