| Backbone TV |
NEW Geoweb video
|
|
|
| RIM:business as usual, only more of it |
April 7, 2004 |
By Peter Wolchak
Times are good at Research In Motion. The Waterloo, Ont., company is selling BlackBerrys just about as fast as it can make them, revenue sits at almost double last year’s figure, profits are up substantially, and sales and prospects in Europe and Asia are healthy.
If there was a dark cloud on RIM’s horizon it was the series of patent infringement court battles the company faced with Good Technology out of Sunnyvale, Calif. But the parties reached an amicable licensing agreement late in March, and neither side is releasing details.Throw in the company’s just-celebrated 20th anniversary and it all leaves chairman Jim Balsillie in a talkative and upbeat mood. Balsillie is philosophical on the question of competition, open to the possibility that RIM may one day have a consumer business, and friendly to the idea of other companies taking his technology and running with it.But don’t ask if he’s worried about a corporate takeover. He’s not, and the topic bores him.
BACKBONE: A lot of the recent activity at your company seems to be on the international stage. In February and March alone you launched a triband BlackBerry in France and built up your presence in the Cayman Islands, The Netherlands, Germany and Belgium. Is the international market becoming increasingly important?
BALSILLIE: Our profile in Europe is soaring. It’s not where it is in North America but it’s accelerating faster now than it did in North America. Asia is a little different because it’s more segmented, you have to approach it on a country-by-country basis. We have a really strong profile in Hong Kong, in Singapore and in Australia, and it’s somewhat strong in the Philippines. And target opportunities for us are India, China, Taiwan, Malaysia and Indonesia. Those are all near-term opportunities.
BACKBONE: Currently all your device manufacturing is done in Waterloo, but I understand you are building a new facility to help meet the demand for BlackBerrys. What are the plans there?
BALSILLIE: Yes, we’re building a new facility but we haven’t announced yet where it will be. It’s not likely our new facility will be in North America, because that doesn’t give us a geographic proximity advantage. After all, if you’re going to build a new plant you might as well get a geographic proximity benefit out of it.
BACKBONE: What about competition? Are there devices out there now that particularly concern you?
BALSILLIE: There’s an interesting question that has been raised by (Harvard Business School professor) Clayton Christensen: Are RIM’s real competitors PDAs or are they CNN and newspapers? So, is the battle with newspapers or TV? Maybe. Or is the battle with cellphones? Maybe. Overall, I’m not convinced a lot of punditry does anyone much good, except maybe in making people act a lot smarter than they really are.”
BACKBONE: Yet there are HP iPaqs and Palm PDAs on the market that have thumb keyboards and built-in wireless networking, and they seem to be moving in on your form factor and functionality.
BALSILLIE: Yes, but these devices are rather expensive, rather big, they have shorter battery life and they’re more complex to manage.
They’re devices with rich distributed computing functionality and some of the interface capabilities of our devices, but you incur acute tradeoffs to do that. So if you really want a wireless PDA [it’s there], but my experience in the market says that is a rather small, high-maintenance sector.
BACKBONE: Overall, you’re not concerned about PDAs as a competitive force?
BALSILLIE: I am not a big fan of the PDA; I never thought there was a PDA market. With increasing access to broadband and the increasing richness of tablet computers you could make a strong argument that there is an extreme bifurcation in the industry between always-on, always-connected packet terminals on one hand, where voice is just another packet application, and on the other end rich tablet computers with gigabytes of memory and big screens and broadband connections. And never the twain shall meet.
Now, do we get out of bed saying ‘How can we hurt the PDA?’ No, I think the PDA is just in a vulnerable position, because it’s in a no man’s land.
BACKBONE: You’ve said before, I believe, that you’re not interested in making the BlackBerry an all-in-one device, with a camera, MP3 player, a gaming system, etc. Is that correct?
BALSILLIE: That’s correct. Far from it, in fact.
BACKBONE: So, for example, you’re not going to put a camera in BlackBerrys?
BALSILLIE: Well, I didn’t say we wouldn’t put a camera in there. I think that’s a niche market; maybe there’s a market segment that is image capture-oriented with (an interest in) auxiliary messaging. But we have 17,000 organizations out there who have our software behind the firewall and I have never had one CEO ask me ‘When can I get pictures on my BlackBerry?’ Never one. I’ve had them ask about Wi-Fi, but that’s different — that’s a specialized device with key transport selection for the job you want to do. But we are not going to say “Here’s a Wi-Fi-camera-MP3-player-messaging-cellphone-PDA-laptop unit that’s small and inexpensive.” You can’t have all that at the same time.
BACKBONE: It’s interesting, then, that you license your software out to other device manufacturers. Even if you’re not looking to produce a range of devices yourself you are happy to see others do so.
BALSILLIE: Oh sure. What we’ve tried to do with our devices is specialize in a certain segment, messaging with BlackBerrys, but we cannot make all the devices that are necessary. So we believe in device diversity and in carrier choice. Our licensing initiative is called the BlackBerry Connect program and it has been very successful.
BACKBONE: What do you think will be the big success story out of that BlackBerry Connect program?
BALSILLIE: There are going to be a whole bunch of them, because there is a lot of geographic diversity and a lot of application diversity. For example, the QWERTY keyboard is different in Germany, and there are differences in user interface and preferences, so you’re going to see way more specialization and segmentation in wireless data. And I don’t worry about that.
BACKBONE: As you look towards the future, do you expect one day that RIM will offer consumer-based products and services?
BALSILLIE: Our focus is very much on the enterprise and prosumer users, and when we say prosumer we mean business people who do not have an IT department. And the latter is actually a bigger market; the people who use Sympatico or AOL or MSN as their work e-mail. Our Web client interfaces to those and all the different POP and IMAP systems, and that’s been a big success. Does that go into a bit of the high-end consumer space? A little, but not that much. But it does hit those people who use messaging to get their work done; that’s been the sweet spot. Now, will we move down the curve in terms of device prices and airtime services? And will we see more interest in Instant Messaging and e-mail as a consumer-type payload? Well, that will be very interesting, but right now the jury is out and it’s not our big target.We’ve penetrated only a small percentage of our current business market, and that’s keeping us very busy. However, I am watching the consumer market with a lot of interest, to see how it’s going to shift.
BACKBONE: You work in an industry in which companies love to buy other companies. Considering the successes you’ve had, are you concerned about a corporate takeover?
BALSILLIE: A lot of things can happen in life, but it doesn’t help a lot to worry about things you can’t control. If someone wants to do something to us, I can’t stop that, but I don’t think it’s a likely scenario.We have an astoundingly interesting business and sector, and arguably our most interesting time ever, and these types of conversations(about a potential takeover) aren’t that interesting to me.
|
|
|
| Green Innovation |
|
|
| Top 300 Issue |
 
|
| Gadget of the Week (Canadian) |
|
Pick the best 3G for you
RIM Blackberry Bold
Choosing the right smartphone is an important decision, and here’s the good news: while both the new iPhone and the Bold are excellent, the feel is entirely different, making it easy to choose.
more>>
|
| Gadget of the Week (Japanese) |
Sounds of Japan
Why record just the visual when you can capture the sounds as well.
more>> |
| Backblog RSS feed |
Click to subscribe  |
|
sponsored by 
