Focus on Mobile Platforms: BlackBerry
Introduced: 1999
History: 2002 was the year when the BlackBerry name really entered the smartphone market, but it has taken a long time to the platform to be seen as more than just a portable emailer. Its unique method of dealing with email and instant messaging has led corporations to jump on the Berry bandwagon and we have seen a gradual rise in subscriber numbers year on year.
This success still appeared to be somewhat of a closed number and the occasional blip in service uptime has led others to criticise the entire system. When it is working, which is almost always, it is the leader without doubt, but this reliance by so many people means that any loss of service is greeted with despair by millions.
RIM has invested a lot of time and money in making the BlackBerry platform more consumer orientated without changing the operating system much at all. What RIM excels in is creating reliable hardware which can power along nicely for days at a time between charges and the current keyboarded devices are the pinnacle of efficiency in the mobile market.
Hardware partners: None
Notable devices: Curve 83xx, BlackBerry Bold, BlackBerry Storm
Current Position: In the past year BlackBerry market share jumped from 13.3% to 19.9% and this is in a greatly expanding sector of the market. The financials are even more impressive and RIM is looking bullet-proof at the moment.
RIM appears to have achieved the impossible and improved its mobile OS step-by-step and not thrown too many bells and whistles into the pot, yet the smartphones sell in bigger numbers every month. It goes against the trends we see with the iPhone and other high-end consumer phones, but goes to show that there will always be a place for functional smartphones which do the basics well.
Likely users: Corporations, but consumer use is growing fast.
Potential: It is difficult to judge where the BlackBerry platform will go, but major OS revisions are surely expected in the near future. RIM may split its product range between business and consumer and could even have two very different operating systems, but the future is looking very bright for RIM at the moment.
