RIM or RIP

Hello readers – it has been a bit of a hiatus, but with so much happening in the industry felt it was time to dust the cobwebs and get back to some good ol’ smart-bytes once again. Today it will be as much of looking back as much as peering into the future – enjoy the read.

In September 2012, I coined in a small post postulating on the future of Blackberry – specifically that their new phones wouldn’t quite cause a dent in the market and the firm would disintegrate if it continued down that path. Fast forward one year and many of those predictions have come true – including the one that Blackberry would perhaps have to move towards a software strategy rather that stick to creating me-too devices.

The question on everyone’s mind is – well, what next; specifically who (if anyone) would buy the firm or parts of it. Over the last few days many names have been bandied about, from John Sculley, to Lenovo and even the original management among others. What is intriguing is who would command the best price – and what would their plan be?

For starters, one must realize what they are getting into. What you end up buying is a company whose back is broken – both in terms of an absence of a concrete road-map as well as the enthusiasm of its employees. The former could be fixed – the latter much more difficult unless a suitor can rally the remaining rank and file within the firm. That being said, Blackberry still has a few aces up its sleeve. It may not be the darling of the masses anymore, but in government circles it is still the preferred device of choice. If Blackberry needs a poster boy to this effect they do not need to look far – President Obama firmly holds on to his device of choice.

In my belief, this presents the first avenue for the way forward. Blackberry has excelled in one thing, and that is security – and the ability to provide it on a global basis. This goes beyond what a common WhatsApp or Viber can provide – and this what governmental agencies all over the world would always pay a premium for. If they are able to come up with a suite of services and applications (perhaps even residing on other devices), this would be immediately an attractive proposition to many. After all, who would say no to a combination of an iPhone or a Galaxy S4 equipped with the secure services of Blackberry.

The second area of opportunity is to move beyond just communications into the machine-to-machine space. Once again, it was a firm like Blackberry who managed to ink deals with carriers around the world to offer global BBM services at a flat rate. Add security and superior compression protocols to the mix then you get a world wide network where machine traffic can flow in a secure and reliable fashion. Given the ongoing trend towards cloud based m2m platforms (from the likes of Ericsson DCP, Jasper etc) the availability of such an underlying framework opens the doors to a whole new set of service providers who can offer global m2m services.

Now – it is difficult to say if either of the paths would be chosen, or if the suitors are simply interested only in its treasure trove of patents, and plan to strip the company of its assets before shuttering it down. For companies who want to enter the “mobile” space and think that Blackberry is their golden ticket – they perhaps should reconsider their options. However, it would be a pity if the company is not given the means and ability to affect a return – albeit as a different software/ service company.

For a company such as Blackberry – I still do think that the old firm still has a couple of tricks up its sleeve; if it were just given the chance and motivation to exercise this freedom.