RIM's BlackBerry

Company Snapshot

Research In Motion (RIM) is a standout Canadian business success story. Since the launch of its hugely popular BlackBerry smart phone in 2001, the company has grown to achieve FY2009 sales of US $11.065 billion and net income of $1.893 billion.

Blue Ocean Strategic Move

RIM's BlackBerry launch was a Blue Ocean strategic move because the company not only created technology innovation, it created superior buyer value innovation as well. Breaking away from traditional cell phone and pager competition, BlackBerry offered a new type of wireless handheld solution for companies. It created a new market space focused on delivering secure company email access to roaming employees. Companies that adopted BlackBerries saved time and money because their staff could now get and send email practically anywhere and any time without having to make trips back to the office. Also, there was no need to install remote client software because RIM offered a turnkey, centralized Enterprise Server and software solution. Since BlackBerries were easy to use and had simple user interfaces and a limited number of contextualized options to choose from, companies also saved training and support costs.

Buyer value was increased because BlackBerries offered high reliability and long battery life, multiple mailboxes at once, and web browsing capability. Traditional PDA functionality such as calendar, address book, and the To Do list were also enhanced along with the included cell phone through smart software that linked these tools and made them easy to use and navigate.

Most importantly, the BlackBerry created a highly secure offering for companies because all emails and their contents could be protected behind their corporate firewalls. If a single device was lost or stolen, the company could easily disable it from its central control server.

Success

The Blue Ocean that RIM created through its BlackBerry keeps growing year after year. Competition in the wireless handheld market is intense, however, RIM continues to expand penetration in existing markets and grow internationally as well. Ovr 50 million units have been sold worldwide. The company's sales grew 84% in FY2009 to $11 billion compared to $6 billion 2008 and its earnings grew 46%. Subscribers quadrupled from 2 million in 2004 to 8 million by April 2007 and tripled again in 2009 to about 25 million.

There are now over 100,000 installations of BlackBerry Enterprise Servers worldwide, and RIM is aggressively partnering with wireless carriers to expand availability. It currently has agreements with about 475 carriers and distribution channels in over 160 countries. The BlackBerry's success in the corporate market and broad appeal has quickly spread over to the consumer market where RIM has had significant growth as well.