1. Sith_Apprentice's Avatar
    See if the BUM's have no real authority they are not useful tools to RIM.

    The RIM sales team need to have some automony to promote RIM with education, training, and products.

    I think we are talking different segments of sales. you seem to be thinking I want to train the floor workers in carrier stores.
    when I want to train the corporate marketing managers, purchasers, the training staff, people who make the corporate decisions for the carriers, and feed it down to the people who sell to the public.
    I want to train and sell to the Enterprise managers, RIM does NOT have the toys that the consumer market wants as a full market, they DO have features that Businesses can use, they just need to know they exist and HOW to use them
    No I understand what you are saying. The unfortunate thing is, you cant just own the corporate market anymore. Consumers are driving the decisions that businesses make. If the CIO wants a particular product personally, its VERY likely that product will make it into the business as well. You HAVE to involve the carriers and sales staff now. There is no other way around it. If they are excited about a product, then consumers will be to. If the consumer is excited, they will push for more adoption in the Enterprise.

    RIM has tried your approach, from the Enterprise down. It only works so far (and we are seeing the limit of that. RIM continues to hold CIO level events, spent on educating and selling to the CIO. Unfortunately, this only presents from a business standpoint, not what the customers WANT.
    03-08-12 09:05 AM
  2. _StephenBB81's Avatar
    No I understand what you are saying. The unfortunate thing is, you cant just own the corporate market anymore. Consumers are driving the decisions that businesses make. If the CIO wants a particular product personally, its VERY likely that product will make it into the business as well. You HAVE to involve the carriers and sales staff now. There is no other way around it. If they are excited about a product, then consumers will be to. If the consumer is excited, they will push for more adoption in the Enterprise.

    RIM has tried your approach, from the Enterprise down. It only works so far (and we are seeing the limit of that. RIM continues to hold CIO level events, spent on educating and selling to the CIO. Unfortunately, this only presents from a business standpoint, not what the customers WANT.

    Your questions of the thread was HOW RIM can stay relevant, and it is from the Enterprise down with their current line up that they can do that.

    I agree FULLY that you can't bet your company on that model but until BB10 comes out that is RIM's best way to stay relevant without seeing further losses to their core markets, it is harder to bring someone back to BES once they've moved from BES, so RIM needs a solid strategy to maintain BES installations, and find ways to expand them.

    Once BB10 is launched RIM also needs a consumer focused agenda, and consumer focused campaigns, but in the short term, you can't out promote the Apple and Android momentum in the consumer space unless you have something new and fresh, which as much as I love OS7, more so than I love the current OS2.0 on my PlayBook, I don't see how they can effectively promote it for the short term while knowing they are killing it in the near future with BB10 devices.

    AND RIM did not try the B2B sales approach, RIM had a service people wanted, so they purchased it, RIM has never been a sales focused company, they are an Engineer focused company, which is why they never had a marketing strategy to company a sales focused company like Apple, who has both Brilliant Engineers, and Brilliant Marketing and Sales people.


    LONG term strategy for how RIM can return to a dominate market position would be far more consumer based, but it would also be a 18-36 month implementation and plan.
    03-08-12 09:15 AM
  3. Spencerdl's Avatar
    Five years ago, yes, smartphones started with business first. Times have changed.
    03-08-12 09:19 AM
  4. Sith_Apprentice's Avatar
    Im not sure that just being a business to business company (for the next 6+ months) will help them, short or long term. Mobile Fusion is a decent product, but still doesnt really offer much in terms of security and the whole BES model that companies will really bite on. ActiveSync offers "good enough" security for most businesses. Thats the issue RIM is facing in the enterprise. Its all going to "good enough" and BYOD. RIM is not, and has never been, prepared for this model.
    03-08-12 09:19 AM
  5. _StephenBB81's Avatar
    . You HAVE to involve the carriers and sales staff now. .
    I missed this point

    I DO want to involve the Carriers,
    BUT My involvement with the Carriers is not at the store front floor level,
    my Involvement with the carriers needs to start at the top, the carriers need to want to sell BlackBerry's converting 5000 floor reps into BlackBerry fans is great, but converting a carrier to actually support BlackBerry is far more important, getting a carrier to create Blackberry based promotions that will fire up 50,000 Employee's to at least not sell against the person wanting a BlackBerry,

    to offer Corporate incentives to Carrier floor staff, co Branding shirts, give aways to stores that sell the most Bolds, or Most Torches, Sell from the Carriers top down, not bottom up, once you have the easy sell things that BB10 will hopefully bring THEN you start at the bottom and move up getting people excited about the new product. but if you don't have the bosses paying you to sell it, and your incentives are all based on other products you don't keep your job just selling BlackBerry's
    03-08-12 09:20 AM
  6. LMG1963's Avatar
    RIM seems to be starting to get things right to a degree here. Yesterday I went to The Source and the sales rep there said how their staff had been sent educational videos on 2.0. He also stated prior to this he knew very little about the playbook. After being educated about this he sold his ipad..bought a playbook and with the extra revenue bought some accessories as well. He now says he has a better tablet and I seen first hand how he is being honest by promoting the playbook and telling customers that bang for buck nothing even is in the same ballpark. He also said they can't keep them on the shelf and even the accessories are selling like wildfire. Actually I was looking for a hdmi cable and they were sold out and only a couple cases left but they were receiving another shipment on Friday. Too bad all other businesses aren't following suit and educating their employees...so yes I agree. Educating sales reps do go a long way
    03-08-12 09:21 AM
  7. _StephenBB81's Avatar
    Five years ago, yes, smartphones started with business first. Times have changed.
    BUT RIM hasn't yet,

    RIM needs to play to their strengths FIRST then address their weaknesses, they still have a strong Enterprise market, and they need to promote and maintain it.
    03-08-12 09:21 AM
  8. _StephenBB81's Avatar
    Im not sure that just being a business to business company (for the next 6+ months) will help them, short or long term. Mobile Fusion is a decent product, but still doesnt really offer much in terms of security and the whole BES model that companies will really bite on. ActiveSync offers "good enough" security for most businesses. Thats the issue RIM is facing in the enterprise. Its all going to "good enough" and BYOD. RIM is not, and has never been, prepared for this model.

    IF being business to business stops the BYOD adoption for company's or at least MAINTAINS BES installations, that is how it helps them long term, they need to make sure the company with OS5 devices is LOOKING at OS7 devices, and not looking at moving to BYOD,

    They need to make sure that those users WITH BYOD can still use BlackBerry's there are many company's moving to Google Apps from Exchange, and with that are dropping BES, RIM needs to be selling to the company's WHY they need to keep BES, so when they have that hot consumer product, people CAN BYOD that product, but if no company's have BES, then they can't get into the BYOD market.
    03-08-12 09:24 AM
  9. Spencerdl's Avatar
    BUT RIM hasn't yet,

    RIM needs to play to their strengths FIRST then address their weaknesses, they still have a strong Enterprise market, and they need to promote and maintain it.
    Yes, I agree. They need to start a solid (real) marketing department which has been quite for to long
    03-08-12 09:26 AM
  10. _StephenBB81's Avatar
    Yes, I agree. They need to start a solid (real) marketing department which has been quite for to long
    I agree there.

    RIM's Marketing department is MORE than just advertise, advertise, advertise, I do agree they need to continue to advertise, but you can throw a boat load of money at advertising and still fail if people don't understand your advertisements.
    03-08-12 09:29 AM
  11. Sith_Apprentice's Avatar
    IF being business to business stops the BYOD adoption for company's or at least MAINTAINS BES installations, that is how it helps them long term, they need to make sure the company with OS5 devices is LOOKING at OS7 devices, and not looking at moving to BYOD,

    They need to make sure that those users WITH BYOD can still use BlackBerry's there are many company's moving to Google Apps from Exchange, and with that are dropping BES, RIM needs to be selling to the company's WHY they need to keep BES, so when they have that hot consumer product, people CAN BYOD that product, but if no company's have BES, then they can't get into the BYOD market.

    RIM has 150k+ BES installed and running, from last i knew. They also are releasing Mobile Fusion to help people keep their BES. the unfortunate thing is, what happens to the licensing for your current BES when you move to BB10 devices? Companies have paid thousands and thousands of dollars for these CALs, only to have them (at this point) be useless on BlackBerry Device Services (BB10/PlayBook BES). Why would I invest in that aspect now until there is a clear upgrade path to BB10 on both device and server side?
    03-08-12 09:30 AM
  12. DenverRalphy's Avatar
    I honestly believe what would benefit RIM most is to start pushing for more interoperability. There's too much effort placed on proprietary products and services within all the major players in the mobile/smartphone industry.

    Apple gets away with it rather well, due mainly to the factor that they bulldozed their way in rather quickly when the consumer smartphone industry was still in its infancy. It will be quite some time before their share in the market declines, and will only happen when the other major players manage to become more desirable (but will eventually happen IMHO).

    Google joined the game a bit later with Android, but with a substantially different approach. Many will say Android grew rapidly due to their OS being open and free, and therefore cheaper for manufacturers to start spewing out handsets faster than anybody else, and from numerous sources. While that may be somewhat true, I believe it to be a minor factor. Point is... regardless how many companies are producing the devices, the customers still have to purchase them, and before they do, they have to want to purchase them. So what makes Android such a desirable purchase? Interoperability with all (or at least a significantly large portion) of the products and services the consumers are already using.

    The push for proprietary services is a detriment to the consumer. Today you see a lot of that from all the major players. Less so Google, while yes they do create their own services, they're designed with the purpose for other platforms to also utilize them. Everybody's creating their own proprietary Cloud services, Music services, Messaging, Media Outlets, etc..

    Lets take BBM for example. Yes I recognize that BBM was around before even the iPhone, but it's a perfect example. Even before BBM, messaging services were not new, there has been numerous other messaging services around for years. What made BBM such a big deal for Blackberry? Simple, it was designed for enterprise/corporate use where it is important to have a closed and secure messaging service. On the consumer side of the coin though, it's a detriment. Unless the receiver of your message also has a BB, you're outa luck. A good messaging service for the consumer needs to be a vehicle of communication which is capable of communicating with anybody, regardless what platform they are using.

    The same principle applies to many other products and services as well. I think RIM almost caught on to that aspect when they chose to incorporate an Android player in the PB, but the motivating force behind that decision was for an entirely different reason.

    While there's no reason RIM and Microsoft shouldn't develop a full ecosystem of their own, I think both BB and WP would both realize substantial benefits should they consider more support for interoperability to the benefit of the consumer.
    Last edited by rmjones101; 03-08-12 at 09:37 AM.
    03-08-12 09:34 AM
  13. ubizmo's Avatar
    7. RIM needs to bring Microsoft Office to the Playbook (and future BB10 devices). Docs to go was a nice stop gap, but its garbage overall.
    Unfortunately, MS now has very good reason not to support this, since they are in direct competition with RIM with their WP7 platform, which does have Office baked in. A W8 tablet is coming.

    This is a problem, I think. WP has Office integrated with SkyDrive; Android has Google Docs integrated with its own cloud services. Apple has iCloud. RIM has no cloud app suite. This is a "tool" kind of a thing and it's where the industry has been headed for a while now. Once again, RIM needs to catch up. Maybe they could get Zoho to develop something.
    03-08-12 09:35 AM
  14. _StephenBB81's Avatar
    RIM has 150k+ BES installed and running, from last i knew. They also are releasing Mobile Fusion to help people keep their BES. the unfortunate thing is, what happens to the licensing for your current BES when you move to BB10 devices? Companies have paid thousands and thousands of dollars for these CALs, only to have them (at this point) be useless on BlackBerry Device Services (BB10/PlayBook BES). Why would I invest in that aspect now until there is a clear upgrade path to BB10 on both device and server side?
    we can't answer that because we are NOT part of a RIM supported sales team that has the clear mission statements to answer those questions.

    if RIM can't answer those questions then they can't maintain the sales.

    and right now it has been said that BB10, will tunnel activesync through BES for controls, that is basically what Mobile fusion does. and if us FAN's don't know that, how are the IT people supporting BES suppose to know that, that needs education,

    of those 150k BES installations, they KEY market is North America, so they need to target them, next they need to address which ones already have BYOD, against which ones don't
    THEN they need to address the larger ones first, there are many great strategies for addressing how to work your territory and in this case it is North America, they need to make sure they stay relevant.

    I don't see how manufacturing MORE PlayBooks just to sell them at a loss is going to help their bottom line,
    03-08-12 09:35 AM
  15. Tre Lawrence's Avatar
    Yeah... I am thinking rushing another PB model to market may not be smart at this juncture.
    03-08-12 09:37 AM
  16. _StephenBB81's Avatar
    I honestly believe what would benefit RIM most is to start pushing for more interoperability. There's too much effort placed on proprietary products and services within all the major players in the mobile/smartphone industry.

    Apple gets away with it rather well, due mainly to the factor that they bulldozed their way in rather quickly when the consumer smartphone industry was still in its infancy. It will be quite some time before their share in the market declines, and will only happen when the other major players manage to become more desirable (but will eventually happen IMHO).

    Google joined the game a bit later with Android, but with a substantially different approach. Many will say Android grew rapidly due to their OS being open and free, and therefore cheaper for manufacturers to start spewing out handsets faster than anybody else, and from numerous sources. While that may be somewhat true, I believe it to be a minor factor. Point is... regardless how many companies are producing the devices, the customers still have to purchase them, and before they do, they have to want to purchase them. So what makes Android such a desirable purchase? Interoperability with all (or at least a significantly large portion) of the products and services the consumers are already using.

    The push for proprietary services is a detriment to the consumer. Today you see a lot of that from all the major players. Less so Google, while yes they do create their own services, they're designed with the purpose for other platforms to also utilize them. Everybody's creating their own proprietary Cloud services, Music services, Messaging, Media Outlets, etc..

    Lets take BBM for example. Yes I recognize that BBM was around before even the iPhone, but it's a perfect example. Even before BBM, messaging services were not new, there has been numerous other messaging services around for years. What made BBM such a big deal for Blackberry? Simple, it was designed for enterprise/corporate use where it is important to have a closed and secure messaging service. On the consumer side of the coin though, it's a detriment. Unless the receiver of your message also has a BB, you're outa luck. A good messaging service for the consumer needs to be a vehicle of communication which is capable of communicating with anybody, regardless what platform they are using.

    The same principle applies to many other products and services as well. I think RIM almost caught on to that aspect when they chose to incorporate an Android player in the PB, but the motivating force behind that decision was for an entirely different reason.

    While there's no reason RIM and Microsoft shouldn't develop a full ecosystem of their own, I think both BB and WP would both realize substantial benefits should they consider more support for interoperability to the benefit of the consumer.
    I would pose you this one question,
    How will RIM make money?
    MS and Google make money off of advertising
    Does RIM now try and fight them on that front as well?
    03-08-12 09:47 AM
  17. Sith_Apprentice's Avatar
    we can't answer that because we are NOT part of a RIM supported sales team that has the clear mission statements to answer those questions.

    if RIM can't answer those questions then they can't maintain the sales.

    and right now it has been said that BB10, will tunnel activesync through BES for controls, that is basically what Mobile fusion does. and if us FAN's don't know that, how are the IT people supporting BES suppose to know that, that needs education,

    of those 150k BES installations, they KEY market is North America, so they need to target them, next they need to address which ones already have BYOD, against which ones don't
    THEN they need to address the larger ones first, there are many great strategies for addressing how to work your territory and in this case it is North America, they need to make sure they stay relevant.

    I don't see how manufacturing MORE PlayBooks just to sell them at a loss is going to help their bottom line,

    Yes (Im one of those that is very aware of how it works lol) and this presents the same single point of failure as BES. I know RIM is doing this to keep the NOC relevant and all the billions they have invested there. But from a company standpoint that plain activesync is good enough, why Mobile Fusion? Why BES? Why the NOC etc etc etc.

    There are so many questions that RIM needs to address here. And that is just on the Enterprise/Business side. If however, you go from devices in, then you can eliminate those other questions. Selling devices to businesses creates the need for BES, the need for Mobile Fusion, the need for the NOC.
    03-08-12 09:50 AM
  18. _StephenBB81's Avatar
    Yes (Im one of those that is very aware of how it works lol) and this presents the same single point of failure as BES. I know RIM is doing this to keep the NOC relevant and all the billions they have invested there. But from a company standpoint that plain activesync is good enough, why Mobile Fusion? Why BES? Why the NOC etc etc etc.

    There are so many questions that RIM needs to address here. And that is just on the Enterprise/Business side. If however, you go from devices in, then you can eliminate those other questions. Selling devices to businesses creates the need for BES, the need for Mobile Fusion, the need for the NOC.
    That is why RIM needs to sell the why BlackBerry, what does BES offer them, can they save money by using a shared data plan? Can MVS save them money? What are the hardware replacement costs? What are the liabilities associated with BYOD, and has the company addressed that,
    Who own the phone number?

    BES offers more than just push email, and they need to promote that
    RIM needs the carriers to offer BES plans, with shared data/voice solutions, RIM needs to make bandwidth conservation an important topic again like it was in the 2G days
    03-08-12 09:58 AM
  19. DenverRalphy's Avatar
    I would pose you this one question,
    How will RIM make money?
    MS and Google make money off of advertising
    Does RIM now try and fight them on that front as well?
    The same way they do now. Through subscriptions, device sales, app sales, etc.. After all, that is there business model right? Make the product more desirable to the consumer and the consumer will purchase more RIM/BB products.
    03-08-12 09:59 AM
  20. _StephenBB81's Avatar
    The same way they do now. Through subscriptions, device sales, app sales, etc.. After all, that is there business model right? Make the product more desirable to the consumer and the consumer will purchase more RIM/BB products.
    Once you remove the proprietary technology why do people pay for your premium cost hardware?
    RIM needs to make non proprietary work with their products, but the proprietary model is what brings you higher margins.

    Why hasn't Linux taken over the market place being so open?
    03-08-12 10:03 AM
  21. Sith_Apprentice's Avatar
    That is why RIM needs to sell the why BlackBerry, what does BES offer them, can they save money by using a shared data plan? Can MVS save them money? What are the hardware replacement costs? What are the liabilities associated with BYOD, and has the company addressed that,
    Who own the phone number?

    BES offers more than just push email, and they need to promote that
    RIM needs the carriers to offer BES plans, with shared data/voice solutions, RIM needs to make bandwidth conservation an important topic again like it was in the 2G days

    See you run into an issue there. Why would a carrier let RIM offer their own plans? They should have had these plans in place when they were the king of smartphones. Now i fear that they have lost what clout they had with the carriers. The carriers dont want bandwidth concerns to be in the forefront of people's minds. They want the opposite. They will charge those astronomical fees for data, and throttle them back anyway.
    03-08-12 10:03 AM
  22. Laura Knotek's Avatar
    Five years ago, yes, smartphones started with business first. Times have changed.
    The main issue RIM faces in its attempt to stay relevant with consumers is its lack of apps. How many times have you seen a popular app of some type not available for BlackBerry? Even Windows Phone is getting many of the popular apps that are still not available for BlackBerry, the latest being the MLB at Bat app (there is a thread about the MLB app being discontinued for BlackBerry). That's just one example. RIM needs to address the issue of consumers looking for apps and seeing "in the App Store, Android Market or Windows Phone Marketplace" with no mention of BlackBerry.
    03-08-12 10:03 AM
  23. undone's Avatar
    Yes (Im one of those that is very aware of how it works lol) and this presents the same single point of failure as BES. I know RIM is doing this to keep the NOC relevant and all the billions they have invested there. But from a company standpoint that plain activesync is good enough, why Mobile Fusion? Why BES? Why the NOC etc etc etc.

    There are so many questions that RIM needs to address here. And that is just on the Enterprise/Business side. If however, you go from devices in, then you can eliminate those other questions. Selling devices to businesses creates the need for BES, the need for Mobile Fusion, the need for the NOC.
    Create fear. You have to do it. 'Why have an exposed mail system when we can offer a vpn tunneled service for all your devices to active sync with!' Have the carriers sell the service. Even more evil, work with the carriers to tunnel and meter email traffic so that the carriers can charge for more. Without the carriers you have nothing, go to the heart.

    Convince the carriers they can make money and its a win win.

    I think having the NOC is a huge advantage they need to exploit in a major way.
    03-08-12 10:04 AM
  24. _StephenBB81's Avatar
    See you run into an issue there. Why would a carrier let RIM offer their own plans? They should have had these plans in place when they were the king of smartphones. Now i fear that they have lost what clout they had with the carriers. The carriers dont want bandwidth concerns to be in the forefront of people's minds. They want the opposite. They will charge those astronomical fees for data, and throttle them back anyway.
    Carriers want less RIM service costs, and Carriers DO want data conservation, they want to maximize their revenue per KB of data, which is why they are already moving to teired data plans,
    I gave reasons in earlier posts and strategies.
    03-08-12 10:07 AM
  25. Sith_Apprentice's Avatar
    The main issue RIM faces in its attempt to stay relevant with consumers is its lack of apps. How many times have you seen a popular app of some type not available for BlackBerry? Even Windows Phone is getting many of the popular apps that are still not available for BlackBerry, the latest being the MLB at Bat app (there is a thread about the MLB app being discontinued for BlackBerry). That's just one example. RIM needs to address the issue of consumers looking for apps and seeing "in the App Store, Android Market or Windows Phone Marketplace" with no mention of BlackBerry.
    There are key apps that are important to consumers, it doesnt have to be 500k apps. But if we are talking high profile applications then absolutely i agree with you. Skype is a big one, Netflix, MLB at Bat, etc. IF you get more playbooks out there (millions more) these applications will come naturally.
    03-08-12 10:07 AM
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