Blackberry maker RIM has had a rough year with an evaporating market share, a plummeting stock price, the failure of their first tablet, and a nearly unending stream of media criticism. Blackberry fans have been holding out hope that Blackberry OS 7 will tide them over until the first BBX phones arrive next year, but it seems the leadership at RIM thinks they need another income source from their traditional corporate-sector customers.
This week, RIM announced that they’ll be bringing their hallmark security capabilities to competing platforms for the first time, starting with iOS and Android. The new service, called Mobile Fusion, will give corporate IT directors the ability to protect company data on the ever-growing pile of personal smartphones coming through their doors, using the same Blackberry Enterprise Servers they’re familiar with. Data encryption and remote wipe from the traditional leader in the corporate sector is a tempting opportunity.
Unfortunately for those consumer Blackberry fans, Mobile Fusion gives iOS and Android the single biggest feature that has drawn corporate IT departments to RIM’s signature handsets in the first place. Without that exclusivity, what’s left to get anyone at all to buy a Blackberry over one of its competitors? If all those enterprise customers can keep the benefits of a RIM device without having to suffer through mediocre Blackberry hardware for the next year, how many Blackberry customers are going to be left by the time BBX devices hit the market?
Short-term cash flow isn’t something any company can afford to ignore. But by giving up their main edge in the handset market, RIM’s leadership may have just signed the death warrant of the Blackberry. RIM could survive as a provider of security products for mobile devices, but they’re quickly running out of time if they plan to remain a smartphone manufacturer.
Once a “Crackberry”, now an IPhone lvr. RIM needs some new innovative ideas..