RIM attacks consumer base with “four screens” strategy

RIM has held on remarkably well to its mobile email base, despite attacks from all the larger smartphone makers, but it still has to make the difficult transition to a broader business and particularly the mobile web model. Devices like the Pearl have given it some traction in the consumer market, and reduced its reliance on corporate email server deals, but now the Canadian firm is making its biggest push yet to lure new users and expand in Europe. In particular, it is seeking to apply its experience in integrated, push-based applications, gained in email, to consumer web 2.0 services, in order to provide a hub for all the consumer’s ‘four screens’. This sounds ambitious, but in his keynote address at last week’s CTIA show in California, co-CEO Jim Balsillie focused heavily on the convergence of the four screens - the home phone, cellphone, PC/internet and TV. As consumers increasingly want their activities unified at the presentation layer, RIM is looking to achieve this through new apps for its Blackberry line of devices. It claims its experience with push email puts it in an ideal position to deliver more consumer-focused, web 2.0 services that rely on personalization and are driven by events or location, rather than browser-based. Talking of social networking, Balsillie said: “It is remarkable when this is in a push, connected, event-driven basis. When you change your access to information, you change your relationship to it - not incrementally but on a quantum basis. These changes are tremendously exciting.”

As for handsets, RIM is launching a highly varied line-up this fall to support its consumer and mobile web strategies. It showed its awareness of the need to expand further outside north America by launching its high profile 3G smartphone, the Bold, in the UK - the bellwether market for western Europe - first (along with its home country of Canada and Singapore). Other European countries and the US will follow later this month. The Bold is undergoing testing at AT&T prior to its US launch, but RIM claims the indicators are good despite competition from the 3G iPhone and others, even in the 3G heartland of Europe. “The sales of the Bold in all of these other countries we’ve launched in have been good,” the company said, referring to the UK and Canada. Meanwhile, the vendor is promising its first ever flip-phone, the Pearl Flip 8220, in October. It was shown off at the CTIA show in San Francisco last week, and will ship in the US, via T-Mobile, first, with UK availability expected in late October or early November. Pricing is not available yet, but is expected to be around $200 with contract. The phone will feature a ’sure-type’ Qwerty keyboard similar to the one on the original Pearl, and a large 240 x 320 color LCD display. Initially, though, it will only support GSM/EDGE, not 3G like the Bold, RIM’s first 3G handset, but is expected to support HSDPA early next year. Balsillie told CTIA listeners that his company will be the “first to crack the code” of combining the smartphone and flip-phone (70% of US consumers prefer a flip format). Also slated for the pre-Christmas period, though possibly not until the end of November, are the RIM Thunder touchscreen handset and the Javelin, a low end model designed to push into the midrange market and possibly developing economies. And the company unveiled the first push to talk phone with Wi-Fi, for Sprint’s iDEN network. Perhaps more important than individual handset designs is RIM’s move into integrated applications. Of course it has a strong track record in this area, with its email apps, but is now trying to appeal more broadly to consumers and ride the mobile internet wave alongside Apple. So the new deals are focused on “lifestyle” rather than enterprise services, and build on last fall’s deal with Facebook - RIM says the integrated Facebook for BlackBerry application has been downloaded 2.5m times in the past year. “It’s been the fastest take-up of any application that we’ve ever had,” Balsillie said. The new customized apps include deals with Facebook competitor MySpace in the popular mobile social networking market; with Microsoft for integrated search; with TicketMaster for buying event tickets without going through the browser; and with internet radio platform Slacker to provide a music library, though this hardly matches up to iTunes or other such services for real music lovers. Interestingly, RIM has also signed up with TiVo, the popular digital video system in the US, to allow the handset to act as a remote scheduler and browser for a DVR, an agreement that could be replicated with broadcasters elsewhere, and would provide a genuine differentiator, and a logical incentive for video operators to offer RIM handsets. In the Microsoft deal, RIM has integrated the Live Search engine into the BlackBerry Browser, making this the default search engine for its devices. The mobile search platform will let BlackBerry users get contextual, location-based search results or look for nearby points of interest, such as restaurants or movie theaters, from inside BlackBerry Maps. This is despite Google’s announcement last week of Google Mobile App for BlackBerry, a free download that offers faster search and a range of Google services for RIM devices. RIM also added native support for AOL, to add to existing backing for GChat, Yahoo IM and Windows Live Messenger.