Jim Balsillie, chief executive of Research in Motion, the Canadian company
behind the BlackBerry, believes there is a market for smaller tablet
computers, despite Apple’s claims.
During a quarterly earnings call on Monday, Steve Jobs, Apple’s
chief executive, provoked the ire of rivals by claiming that 7in tablet
computers were so small as to be unusable, and that the category would be
“dead on arrival”.
It prompted Jim Balsillie, Research
in Motion’s chief executive, to respond
with a blog post in which he criticised Apple’s “reality distortion
field”. He said that the iPad’s lack of Flash support meant it didn’t fulfil
the needs of customers, and that Apple was only telling people “half the
story”.
RIM has recently unveiled the PlayBook, it’s answer to the iPad, which uses a
7in display and supports Adobe Flash.
“For those of us who live outside of Apple’s distortion field, we known that
7in tablets will actually be a big portion of the market, and we know that
Adobe Flash support actually matters to customers who want a real web
experience,” wrote Balsillie.
“We also know that while Apple’s attempt to control the ecosystem and maintain
a closed platform may be good for Apple, developers want more options and
customers want to fully access the overwhelming majority of websites that
use Flash.
Year 2011 does not seem to be a lucky year for Research In Motion (RIM). Analysts also seemed to always be pessimistic remark about the sustainability of RIM in 2012. RIM Will it last? In
November, RIM suffered huge losses because the Blackberry Playbook does
not sell well in the global market, not compete with the iPad and
Android tablet. As quoted by Bloomberg, since it was launched earlier this year, sales continue to decline Playbook. Sales
figures, ranging from 500,000 units in the first quarter of 2011, then
200,000 units in the second quarter of 2011, and only 150,000 units in
the third quarter of 2011. If the total, only 850,000 units sold. Sales Playbook is less than the target it causes a loss of RIM reached 485 million U.S. dollars. The negative impact of delays RIM has said it will delay the newest operating system, named BB10 until the end of 2012. The delay is because RIM is waiting for the latest dual core processor. In fact, this delay gives room for Apple and Android to increasingly dominate the global market. In November 2011, the analyst Ian Fogg said, RIM has a track record often postpone the date of the launch of their products. "That does not bode well. We will see a slow decline," said Fogg commemorate RIM. In
a statement, Co CEO of RIM Mike Lazaridis said that it took some time
to realize the benefits of the latest operating system transitions
performed RIM. "However,
we continue to believe that RIM has the strength and ability to
maintain a leading role in the mobile communications industry,"
Lazaridis said. Both
CEO of RIM, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, was willing to cut their
salaries to $ 1 per year until the company improves. This was done because the value of RIM's stock continues to decline. Heyday has passed? RIM
profit until the third quarter of 2011 dropped 71 percent (year on
year) from 911.1 million U.S. dollars to 265 million U.S. dollars. Lazaridis
also aggravate the discontent of the investors by cutting the
Blackberry product sales target to around 11-12 million units in the
final quarter of 2012. In fact, in the same period last year, sales reached 14.8 million units of the Blackberry. Additionally, the Blackberry operating system market share in the United States also dropped. According to pollsters The NDP Group, the Blackberry OS market share in the U.S. this year dropped to 10 percent. Blackberry
heyday occurred in 2009 when they earned 44 percent of the smartphone
market in the U.S., beating the IOS and Android. However, BBOS popularity began to decline in 2010 with the acquisition of 25 percent of the market. However, RIM still has a loyal customer of businessmen who consider Blackberry secure communication systems. However,
the system is safe for business people often make conservative
government threatened to block the Blackberry service if they are not
given the opportunity to control the communication of the Blackberry. What to do? Some
investors have pushed RIM to release the hardware business as well as
open systems and networks for Blackberry smartphones from other vendors.
Similar disclosed ThinkEquity analyst Mark McKechnie. "If
they want to maintain the assets, they need to open up the Blackberry
to another platform and see themselves as a software company," McKechnie
said, as quoted by Reuters. Analysis of McKechnie's as if to say, this is the way for RIM to survive until the following years. That is, if RIM heartened off the system and network Blackberry and not too late to do it.
