RIM retains cool in India after global shake-up

With two high-profile executives exiting Research in Motion (RIM), the makers of BlackBerry, it might look like the Canada-based smartphone vendor is in trouble. But its troubles are not rooted in India, underline experts.

India market in the first eleven months of 2011 saw smartphone shipments crossing the 10 million mark for the first time, to account for 6 per cent of the near 166 million shipments in country. RIM’s ability, point experts, to survive in a market full of Nokia and Samsung products is dependent on its ability to turn around consumers’ perceptions of the brand in an effort to attract new users, but also to hold on to the corporate clients they already have.

In India, one of the markets where brand BlackBerry continues its strong hold has already started ushering change. Around two years back, the company re-branded its product from a phone for the suit- wearing corporates to youngsters. It has also started targeting low-usage customers with packs for pre-paid customers, which is more than 80 per cent of the telecom market in India.

While a technology analyst, who did not wish to be identified, maintained that changing its enterprise only image has been a marketing failure for RIM, not everyone seemed to agree with it. “The non-enterprise market is huge. If you start something, the entire market cannot be enveloped at one go,” said Alok Shende, principal analyst and co-founder of Ascentius Consulting.

RIM and its operator partners have renewed their efforts to rein younger users into the BlackBerry fold. Recently, leading telecom operators --Bharti Airtel and Vodafone -- launched offers with unlimited access to BlackBerry Messenger (a free text messaging platform) for tariffs as low as Rs 129 per month. The plans are bundled with SMSes and targeted at youngsters who communicate heavily. State-owned MTNL too started BlackBerry services this month with Rs 150 per month, trial packs.

BlackBerry Messenger is still viewed by many as a differentiator. With availability of affordable BlackBerry devices within sub-10k price category, experts believe that device uptake would further go up. “RIM should see good traction in the Indian market and should retain their share and also grow at least for the next few quarters,” said Shende. Globally, more than 75 million people use BlackBerry services every day and the BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) platform has more than 55 million users.

As per a report released by CyberMedia Research, RIM ranks number three in the smartphone market in India. It had 15.5 per cent market share and was behind Nokia and Samsung at 38.4 per cent and 27.5 per cent respective market shares in January-November 2011.

RIM has its own set of challenges to face in India. For one, the design and architecture of the product itself has not changed remarkably in many years. Also, it is far behind in the number of applications (or apps) that that its operating system provides, in comparison to Apple's iOS and Google's Android. “In the consumer segment where a lot of growth is coming from, RIM continues to face challenges from affordable devices on the Android platform,” said Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner.

The market is still waiting for RIM’s “killer product” in the new line of smartphones, which have been delayed until later this year.

The key for RIM’s survival in India is however its enterprise clients, which continues to attract a large number of users. “In other markets many enterprise users have shifted to the iPhone. This has not happened in India. BlackBerry is still perceived as a high-end device and has a lot of attraction for the consumers,” pointed Gupta.

The exit of two co-CEO's Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, earlier this week, is being seen as a signal that the company is ready for change. The India business too saw a leadership change recently when its long standing managing director Frenny Bawa quit and replaced by Sunil Dutt, who earlier worked with Hewlett-Packard.