- He makes the interesting claim that RIM is losing market share in the smartphone arena mostly because the all-touch segment of the market is growing like crazy. The keyboard segment of the market is growing much more slowly, but still growing. So year-over-year RIM is ahead on handsets shipped/in-use, but because touch is growing like gangbusters the percentage numbers are dropping (down to something like 7%). It's all relative. But it is plausible. If you have to have a keyboard -- and many people do -- RIM devices are king, between their high-quality devices and the BES network in behind it as a killer feature.
- That said, the BB-10 device to be first launched will be touch, then a keyboard BB-10. He is clearly hoping for non-trivial percentage penetration into the touch segment, especially the consumer and BYOD segments since that is where the growth -- and therefore the money -- is.
- He says the carriers (presuming the US carriers mostly) see touch as a duopoply -- iOS/Apple and Android/Samsung. Neither Motorola (ie Google) nor Microsoft are mentioned, even though Microsoft is also trying to ramp up their market penetration. Personally I see the Motorola buy by Google as the most disruptive thing coming to Android over the next 18 months as Google starts to favor itself in Android distribution -- further weakening an (IMO) already bizarrely weak segment. Short of a currently-invisible killer-app inherent in Windows-8/Metro, I don't see Microsoft playing extensively in the mobile phone segment (but tablets might be a different story depending on application portability). The time is right for RIM to abandon its past devices and move to the BB-10 platform.
- There's no discussion of tablets here, but they have to be thinking about them.
2012-07-11
RIM CEO Interview Thoughts
Quick thoughts on the interview with RIM CEO Thorsten Heins in CIO Magazine: