Blackberry manufacturer, Research In Motion, which was in the news for the wrong reasons, particularly because of a possible bankruptcy, has just announced that its next generation devices, the Blackberry 10 OS devices will be released in January 2013. The announcement was made by the company’s CEO, Thorsten Heins, who had initially said that the devices would be ready only by the first quarter of the next year.
Around a month ago, the CEO had announced a delay in the release of the new devices and downsizing of the company by 5000 employees, two pieces of information that led analysts to believe that the company was going downhill. The company was said to be in a death spiral and it appears that the term continued to stick to the company, which was not very good news for it. In another interview, Heins had shrugged away the “death spiral” tag and dismissed any comparisons that the company’s troubles were similar to that of Finnish mobile phone giant, Nokia.
Justifying his comment that the company is not going down like Nokia, he said that the Blackberry platform is not “burning” referring to Nokia CEO’s internal memo that announced a shift from Symbian to the Windows Phone platform. When questioned that Nokia’s Windows Phone devices sales doubled and the company sold around 4 million devices, he said there was no proof of it. However, he did admit to considering a change in strategy and operating system and considered Android, but subsequently going against the decision as it wouldn’t differentiate the Blackberry device anymore. Heins went on to say that the promise of a Blackberry device is that it gets work done for users who have little time to absorb the content but at the same time provides all the needed applications and games. He also justified the nature of the phone by saying that 87% of the users access social networks from phones while only 65% of smartphone users do the same. Heins believes that Blackberry users are a breed apart and require specific services that only this device can offer. He also said that the critical aspect here is that RIM provides the hardware, software as well as the services, something that nobody else does.
There is a possibility that RIM is willing to license out its platform if it finds reliable partners but while that might save the company, it won’t help greatly with its revenues.
