Research in Motion Company’s Business Strategy
At the very time of its establishment, Research in Motion (RIM) became a pioneering company in the development of wireless technologies. The innovativeness of devices and the convenience of their usage made the BlackBerry products a success. However, the market of technological innovations is tough. The competition puts pressure on companies and requires precise and sophisticated decision-making policies. For RIM, 2011 became marked with the decline in financial state and productivity. The inability to keep up to the pace of innovative development induced the company’s failure.
It is claimed by many researchers that the success of the innovations is deeply interconnected with its commercialization. It is recognized that commercialization plays a crucial role in the technological innovation processes because proliferation and spread of products highly depend on it. The RIM’s success in 1990 was caused mainly because of the good commercial strategies and their efficient implementation. The expansion of business relationship also positively influenced the company’s performance and increased the revenues (Bigus 2).
The main factor that explains the success of RIM BlackBerry products in the period from 1990 to 2008 is that the company didn’t have the significant rivals in the market. So BlackBerry remained an outstanding device that gradually evolved through time and managed to provide the users with all the necessary functions and services. Nevertheless, the changes in the innovative technology market happened with the launch of Apple in 2007. Apple has drastically changed the market and became its leader in a very short time supplanting the other companies from their vantage points.
Apple started to introduce its innovations that gained a lot of popularity in the world due to effective marketing and promotion. The other companies, and particularly RIM, didn’t manage to come up with something new and functional as well as Apple and its iPhone and iPad. The Apple’s products became standards. So when RIM introduced its BlackBerry Playbook, it became a failure because it only imitated iPad, it didn’t offer any new solutions and services. The fact that “the device was rushed to market missing key features such as email, contacts and calendar applications” show that the company’s officials were likely under a great pressure of the competition and attempted to improve the RIM’s finances (Bigus 4). Unfortunately, the introduction of the device was the first notification of the company’s further decline.
Although the RIM’s financial position was stable and healthy by 2011, the poor marketing strategy and the loss of positions in the development of innovative technologies had a bad impact on the company’s performance. The outages in the BlackBerry services swiped the RIM’s confidence hard. The malfunction of the basic services that the BlackBerry users experienced October 14, 2011, at the global scale made the public consider the company untrustworthy. This global failure significantly reduced the company’s popularity and made its main rival, Apple, to become even more prominent and respected.
In the example of RIM, it can be observed that the success in the technology market depends on the multiple factors. First of all, the efficient and well-elaborated business strategy is needed that would take into account all the possible threats and would allow emphasizing the internal strengths. Secondly, creativity should be an evolving and ever-lasting process. The innovativeness of technologies must be combined with the functionality and must be user-friendly. Unfortunately to RIM, Apple managed to become advanced in the innovation creativity. At the same time the BlackBerry products became unable to forge ahead, and thus the company has lost a great part of its confidence and stability.
Works Cited
Bigus, Paul. Research in Motion: BlackBerry Blackout (A), Ontario, Canada: Ivey Publishing, 2012. Print.