[BlazorBoy]

The Wall Street Journal

TECHNOLOGY
Updated April 17, 2012, 4:46 p.m. ET

The Lonely BlackBerry Store
RIM's Sole Stand-Alone Outlet Serves as Reminder of Failed Corporate Strategy
By WILL CONNORS

FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich.�On a gray stretch of highway 25 miles northwest of Detroit, in a strip mall next to an OfficeMax and a dry cleaners, sits the only stand-alone BlackBerry retail store in North America.

The store opened in 2007, six months after Apple Inc. rolled out its first iPhone. It was supposed to mark the beginning of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd.'s retail push in the U.S. and Canada.

A quiet BlackBerry store in Michigan serves as a somber reminder of Research In Motion's failed strategy to stave off competition from larger rivals. Will Connors reports on digits. Photo: Will Connors for The Wall Street Journal.

Instead, the store serves as a somber reminder of RIM's failed strategy to stave off competition from larger rivals domestically. Apple's iPhone and phones run off Google Inc.'s Android operating system have since decimated RIM's once-dominant share of the lucrative North American smartphone market.

The company's share price has tumbled, and it has struggled with a series of product delays, a tablet that has so far flopped and big operational problems�including a three-day global outage last fall.

As Apple and Microsoft Corp. bet big on North American retail stores for their gadgets, RIM has mostly decided to cede the continent and target the developing world in its own retail push.
RIMSTORE
RIMSTORE
Will Connors/The Wall Street Journal

The BlackBerry store in Farmington Hills, Mich., is RIM's only stand-alone retail store in North America.

RIM did open BlackBerry-branded kiosks in seven airports across the U.S., but new Chief Executive Thorsten Heins said in a recent interview that these kiosks probably aren't the best way to sell BlackBerrys.

Then there is the Farmington Hills store, which remains largely forgotten.

On a recent Friday afternoon, a slow trickle of customers entered the store, which is operated by Midwestern retailer Wireless Giant. Most people were BlackBerry owners seeking technical assistance. One elderly woman was looking to replace her cracked screen. A middle-aged man in a blue suit bought a new BlackBerry hip holster.

The store has two full-time employees and is stocked with accessories. For new customers, there is a BlackBerry training room in the back of the store with a whiteboard and a conference table. A television set in the corner, plugged into a PlayBook tablet, displayed a roaring fireplace.

"It's a landmark," said Justin Dabish, a salesman at Metro PCS, a phone retailer in the same strip mall as the BlackBerry store. "Everybody in the area knows about it, but nobody goes there."

Nathan Speidel, the store's lone salesman, says that most people come in for repairs or technical questions. He says that business is slow, generally, but they have dependable regulars.

"We have a really loyal customer base because of the good services we offer," Mr. Speidel said.

RIM hasn't signaled it is going to open more stores in North America anytime soon. "RIM will continue to evaluate different distribution approaches, including exploring opportunities with retail partners around the world that address local market needs and provide a compelling retail experience for both existing and future BlackBerry customers," a RIM spokeswoman said in an emailed statement.

Mr. Heins is betting RIM's next line of phones, called BlackBerry 10, will help reverse flagging sales in the lucrative U.S. market. The phones are due out later this year.

In the meantime, the Michigan store is "struggling a bit, but it continues to be in business," Wireless Giant President Isaac Hanna said. "We're hoping to have that fixed with some great new [BlackBerry] products coming out."

Wireless Giant, whose headquarters are in the nearby town of Madison Heights, proposed the idea of the store to RIM as part of a broad retail plan. The two companies discussed the possibility of opening 100 stores in five years across the U.S. and Canada, but halted plans when RIM began to face headwinds from competitors.

Apple has over 240 stores in the U.S. Microsoft, which is powering Nokia Corp.'s latest line of smartphones, is also expanding its retail presence, with 20 outlets open, or about to open, in the U.S.

Even here in Farmington Hills, along Orchard Lake Road, competing retailers surround the BlackBerry store. Across the street is an AT&T Inc. store, a Verizon Wireless store, and a Sprint Nextel Corp. store, which all sell BlackBerrys. Further down the road are stores from Best Buy Co. and Radio Shack Corp.

Despite RIM's failures domestically, BlackBerrys still remain wildly popular in many fast-growing overseas markets, from Nigeria to Indonesia.

In the past year, RIM has opened stores in several Asian countries, where sales have held up better than its home market. There are already four BlackBerry-branded stores in Jakarta, including the biggest BlackBerry store in the world, which opened in the Indonesian capital in February.

RIM said last week it is opening its first BlackBerry-branded store in Dubai sometime this year, though a RIM spokeswoman said it wasn't certain exactly when.

RIM has "ambitious plans" to bring more stores to countries such as Indonesia and Thailand, said Gregory Wade, RIM's regional vice president for Asia, in a recent interview. The plans include flagship stores, store-in-stores and kiosks in shopping malls throughout the region, Mr. Wade said.

The Mideast has been an especially promising market for RIM. The company more than doubled smartphone sales in the region last year, according to Sandeep Saihgal, RIM's managing director for the Middle East.

While RIM has struggled to build an application library to rival Apple and Google, it has rolled out more than 1,000 Arabic-language apps, the company said. RIM last year set up a gaming lab in Jordan for developers.

RIM said Middle East developers are creating up to 20 new apps for Middle East users each week, including apps that provide selections of Arabic poems and jokes, and an app that tracks sunset times during the holy month of Ramadan, alerting users when they can end their day-long fast.

[Fubaz]

I was in an airport (forget which one, was too many flights and layovers)
and there was a BlackBerry store inside of the Airport.

So their first paragraph is wrong, discredits the whole story.

EDIT: it was ATL

[jonty12]

I was in an airport (forget which one, was too many flights and layovers)
and there was a BlackBerry store inside of the Airport.

So their first paragraph is wrong, discredits the whole story.

EDIT: it was ATL

Actually it doesn't. The article mentions the seven airport stores (also operated by Wireless Giant), but refers to this store as the only "stand-alone" store.

[Darlaten]

Ahhhhh, that story was kinda sad.

I can picture an employee gazing out the window of a run-down store on a fog-lit night, his eyes piercing the vale of darkness in a desparate attempt to see if another human being knows he's there. A noise graps his attention and briefly, a tear of joy comes to his eye as he thinks, finally, someone will come in to the store. The noise happens again! But this time, it's a tear of sorrow, loneliness and dispair for the noise was only that of a lonely wolf howling in the background. The lone employee slinks back into the store; grabs his broom and begins to sweep. All the time muttering to himself repeatedly, "maybe tomorrow".

[masqueofhastur]

The formatting was messed, like a broken record. No interest in reading that.

[Chrisy]

LOL! Funny post D!

[pcguy514]

Me thinks someone @wsj saw cnn and decided to throw a hissy fit.

[Laura Knotek]

I question the point of putting a store in a suburb of Detroit.

The store should have been placed in Washington, DC.

[BergerKing]

I question the point of putting a store in a suburb of Detroit.

The store should have been placed in Washington, DC.

Location, location, location..

[app_Developer]

I question the point of putting a store in a suburb of Detroit.

The store should have been placed in Washington, DC.

I guess the partner who proposed the store made the choice.

Apple's first store was in a very successful, high traffic mall in a wealthy suburb of Washington, DC. It's in a county with the 2nd highest average income in America, next door to the only county in America which beats it. That store became the prototype for hundreds of succesful stores around the world after it. For the most part, they make great location choices.

But then, Apple did that themselves, on their own initiative back in 2001.

[sinsin07]

Ahhhhh, that story was kinda sad.

I can picture an employee gazing out the window of a run-down store on a fog-lit night, his eyes piercing the vale of darkness in a desparate attempt to see if another human being knows he's there. A noise graps his attention and briefly, a tear of joy comes to his eye as he thinks, finally, someone will come in to the store. The noise happens again! But this time, it's a tear of sorrow, loneliness and dispair for the noise was only that of a lonely wolf howling in the background. The lone employee slinks back into the store; grabs his broom and begins to sweep. All the time muttering to himself repeatedly, "maybe tomorrow".

LOL Yes, I think I saw this movie on Turner Classic Movies.

[BlazorBoy]

LOL Yes, I think I saw this movie on Turner Classic Movies.

I know I saw it!

Well done D.

[swyost]

I was in an airport (forget which one, was too many flights and layovers)
and there was a BlackBerry store inside of the Airport.

So their first paragraph is wrong, discredits the whole story.

EDIT: it was ATL

Yes, that typo means that RIM is really doing great in the US and there are really RIM stores on every corner. The article does mention the airport locations, which it refers to as kiosks. Guess what? That might actually be how they are described in RIM's files regarding retail locations. BTW, since you couldn't identify the airport at first, did that then invalidate the fact that you saw one in Atlanta?

[Laura Knotek]

Location, location, location..

I guess the partner who proposed the store made the choice.

Apple's first store was in a very successful, high traffic mall in a wealthy suburb of Washington, DC. It's in a county with the 2nd highest average income in America, next door to the only county in America which beats it. That store became the prototype for hundreds of succesful stores around the world after it. For the most part, they make great location choices.

But then, Apple did that themselves, on their own initiative back in 2001.

If there had been a BlackBerry store in Washington, DC from 2007 to the present, it would have made a lot of money. Folks in DC still are predominantly BlackBerry users. Rust-belt cities and suburbs of rust-belt cities were not good locations for BlackBerry stores in 2007 or now.

[Tre Lawrence]

Okay, I didn't know it was in Detroit. Why? No.