How should RIM react to increased competition from Apple, Palm?
mobilecrunch.com
mobilecrunch.com
I would (a) (pay decent money to get a brilliant designer to) design a new model with a powerful hardware base(nice camera, graphics card) (b)radically clean up the software platform, paying attention to well designed graphics apis and controllers (c)give away an upgrade to the new platform to anyone who turns in an old model and then start working on the next hardware AND sw in ONE package device. (d) Build an appstore that caters to apps only for this new model (Have a better approval process than Apple, shouldn't be very hard to do!).
Plan to release ONE model every two or three years or so. Pay more attention to the Indian and Chinese markets (they sell many more phones than the American market - most plans are not tied to a device and people are used to buying undiscounted phones).
This instantly creates a mass of customers standardised on a single platform with identical device capabilities (this is the biggest advantage of the IPhone, there are at most one or two device/sw combinations to program for. the RIM hardware/sw combos are all over the place and the graphics suck badly).
yeah ok that probably makes no financial sense. But that's what I'd consider doing if I were an executive at RIM (which is probably a good reason I am not a high paid manager :-P).
RiM can dominate the "business mobile" marketplace if they play their cards right.
Hence, I believe things like security, reliability, or even a better browser will be more welcome by the business users (and the procurement decision makers!) than will some consumer eye candy like a camera.
I particularly agree with getting into the emerging markets, such as that of China and India, even though the business there might not have a keen interest (let alone purchasing power) in RIM's products at the present. Quoting Charles Geschke (co-founder of Adobe) in Founders at Work -- "shoot where the duck is going to be, not where the duck is".