MDIA 4700 – Critical thinking in Media

1. research report
Research in Motion
by Akshay Chauhan
Presented at BCIT School of Business
on 30 June 2015
in MDIA 4700 - Critical Thinking and Ethics in Media

2. INDEX
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY • 03
ANALYSIS • 04
Rise of Blackberry
Competitors
Shift in the smartphone market – Decline of RIM
PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION • 06
Complacency and failure to innovate
Investor relationship rather than with customers
Lack of planned strategies
Internal problems
RECOMMENDATION • 08
Longer term planning
Continuous innovations and pushing limits
Pivoting strategies and evolving
Customer–centered and user experience first
BIBLIOGRAPHY • 10

3. 3
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Research In Motion (RIM), a Canadian firm made Blackberrry, a
wireless email solution that made RIM a $75 billion dollar market
value company.
After the launch of Apple’s iPhone in 2007 and emergence
Google’s Android operating system RIM had lost its $75 billion
dollar market value. The situation became so bad in just 5 years
after iPhone that RIM wasn’t even able to any investors that
would invest in their business.
The co-founder and former CEO Mike Lazaridis failed to see
the shift in consumer demands post iPhone. The CEO became
too complacent becuase of the success of Blackberry phones.
Blackbery had beat competing products from Nokia, Samsung,
Palm and Sony, so for Lazaridis iPhone was just another phone.
At the same time RIM grew too big and too fast, and had
developed lot of internal problems like bureacracy and
politicking. The teams missed deadlines and there weren’t
people in the management ready to take responsibilities.
there was even communication problems withing the middle
managment and the executives.
Products that were launched during the initial iPhone era were
riddled with issues in software, and hardware. Company had
failed to innovate at this crucial stage when consumers were
demanding better phones and more features. Blackberry’s
software looked ugly and was slow as compared to iPhone and
Android phones. But by many insider reports the companies
internal problems had a much greater role in the companies fai
RIM now Blackberry Ltd. by 2012, had less than 0.5%
smartphone market share, multiple CEO change, executives left
the company, multiple product failures, and lost all its enterprise
and government clients as well.

4. 4
Rise of Blackberry
Mike Lazardis founded RIM in 1984. And before it made
Blackberry phone pioneer wireless email solution, it had
multiple successes in other tech products. RIM had a $600,000
contract with General Motors for network ads. They made
DigiSync Film KeyKode Reader launched in 1990 and won an
Academy Award for technical achievement.
RIM at the time switched its focus into wireless products and
launched two wireless products(point-of-sale system and
wireless two-way page) before they made their first Blackberry
phone. A product which remained their iconic product for many
years to come.
Competitors
Nokia, Samsung, Sony and Motorola launched many products
that were called as the Blackberry–killers but they all failed to
beat Blackberry in quality and services. Blackberry was used by
politicians, celebrities, major global corporations, had official
contracts with militaries branches in US, government sections
in UK, Middle-east and South Asia. Blackberry had become the
phone of the status quo.
By mid-2007 had nine million subscribers and RIM was valued
at $42 billion. Every three month RIM had a million more
susbcribers. RIM partnered with 300 carriers in 120 countries.
Blackberry’s market stronghold only began changing late 2007
after first iPhone came along.
ANALYSIS 1 OF 2

5. 5
Shift in the smartphone market – Decline of
RIM
Prior to iPhone, Blackberry was primarily an wireless email
solution with mediocre multimedia features. iPhone changed
all that by bringing better camera, music player, application
ecosystem in a beautiful small form factor. It had issues with
battery life in the beginning but it opened consumers to a more
capable device than just a smartphone.
iPhone had yearly revisions on their iphone product and with
each update they made their phones significantly better.
Google’s Android phone Operating System was also making
progress on their software platform and made their operating
system free. This was quickly adopted by companies like HTC,
Samsung, Sony.
Apps on both Android and iPhone were showing that you
could use the phone as a computer and this gave rise to tablet
computers. Blackberry phones even did not have Skype for
many years.
RIM did not acknowledge the need for change and launched
their first tablet product and complete touch screen device in
2010. By then it was already too late. It had already lost a huge
market share of user to Android and iPhone.
In the middle east and India, RIM was also being forced by
government to give access to its encrypted email service stating
as a national security reasons.
ANALYSIS 2 OF 2

6. 6
PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION 1 OF 2
Complacency and failure to innovate
Blackberry had blindsided its competitors in the past and now
it got blindsided by iPhone and Android phones. In multiple
occassions Jim Lazaridis had stated that the consumers want
phones with physical keyboard and touch screen devices don’t
make any sense.
Investor relationship rather than with
customers
RIM seemed to be focussed more and more on selling the
same product that made profits for them in the past to other
countries.This made them more profits but also less focused
into venturig into new innovative ideas. As RIM saw success
in Africa, Asia and Middle East it lost its market stronghold in
North America to Apple and Google.
RIM by limiting the capabilities of their phones though of
helping the networks save bandwidths. Apple and Google did
exactly opposite of that and allowed high quality multimedia
content to be played on that. Consumers loved that and
demanded a better product in every iteration. Consumers
wanted a better camera, better processing more functionality.
Lack of planned strategies
Then CEO Lazardis had invested in a philantropic and
recreational endouvours rather than focusing on pivoting their
business strategies.

7. 7
PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION 2 OF 2
Their major step in response to iPhone and Android phones
was to acquire QNX, a company that made mobile operating
system. That response in itself was 3-4 years too late and
they found it was much harder to incorporate their existing
Blackberry encrypted services. They had to work ground up on
the new system.
The new and old systems meant that support on the older
systems would have to be reduced and this lead to loss of trust
of loyal blackberry users.
Blackberry also made ‘App World’ similar to ‘Apple App Store’
and ‘Google Marketplace’ but the Apps weren’t well curated as
well it did on other platforms. App ecosystem was not favoured
by the app developers either. Companies had made apps and
even physical attachments on Apple and Google platfom that
used the hardware capability of the phone to be used as even
more useful tool. People started looking at ideas of things to do
with phones as powerful computer to make lives simpler. And
Blackberry still a devide that just sent and recieved emails.
Internal problems
As RIM grew big to fast their werent many communication
procedures and practices kept in check. The four fold increased
in employees the company bragged about also increased the
internal bureaucracy, and politicking. The talented employees
started leaving the company for companies like Facebook and
Twitter. Some were intentionally laid off just to keep headcount
of employees in company low.
Even top executives left the companies.

8. 8
RECOMMENDATIONS 1 OF 2
Longer term planning
Apple during their iPhone launch had envisioned an ecosystem
of apps, music and videos that their device would be ready
to handle. They already had iTunes which is the biggest online
music and video store. Apple and Android systems both
welcomed developers and gave more resources for them to
learn and use their
Apple’s product lineup and strategies extended easily 5 years
in the future. A long term plawould have help RIM see that they
could not see themselves making the same email keyboard
phone for the next decade and make profits for its investors.
Continuous innovations and pushing limits
Apple each year came out with new phones which were much
faster, always with improved cameras, more features that would
be used and liked by its users. RIM’s Blackberry had only small
changes in design and hardware because they never pushed
back on the carriers that had an influence in the capabilities of
the devices.
Apple and Android phones allowed user to play high quality
media content that made carriers to open more bandwidth for
the subscribers. They both took over the phone softwares and
removed all control of carriers from their devices.

9. 9
Pivoting strategies and evolving
Jim Balsillie the co-founder of Blackberry to stay on top of
phone business wanted to make their Blackberry messenger
services (which relied on device hardware as identification rather
than a name, phone or email) available free on all devices. The
company had internal debates and this idea was shelved.
At the same time WhatsApp messenger became the biggest
instant messaging app on Blackberry, Android and iPhone.
So RIM lost the race on messaging service as well.
Customer–centered and user experience first
Apple and Google’s focus on improving their product, making
them simpler to use.
Both of them also thought about developers engaged in
building apps on their platform and allowed them more access
to hardware features.
As people started seeing other people talk about Android and
Apple iPhones, naturally their sales went up and made more
profit for them.
RIM had its priority on making profit by selling more products,
tand they forgot about improving their user experience or
products.
RECOMMENDATIONS 2 OF 2

10. 10
• http://www.canadianbusiness.com/technology-news/how-
management-has-failed-at-rim/
• http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/21/2789676/rim-
blackberry-mike-lazaridis-jim-balsillie-lost-empire
• http://www.thestar.com/business/2011/07/28/rim_layoffs_
blamed_on_failure_to_innovate.html
• http://www.forbes.com/sites/haydnshaughnessy/2012/04/02/
why-rims-failure-could-be-your-failure-too/
• http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-12-05/the-rise-
and-fall-of-blackberry-an-oral-history
BIBLIOGRAPHY