...ever been waiting in an airport, and the person beside you is typing quickly on a tiny keyboard? Have you ever used a Blackberry? Research in Motion (RIM) is a multi-award-winning company that designs and produces hardware, software, and service solutions for wireless communications used by worldwide business and consumer markets. These state-of-the-art products and services provide customers with immediate access to information in order to make sound business decisions 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Whether you use the Blackberry device or the Pearl “smart” phone, you can be assured that you have purchased a quality product connecting people either at work or at play, designed and built by one of the most innovative Canadian companies of all time. Background RIM is a Waterloo-based company founded in 1984 by two University of Waterloo engineering students, Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Fregin. Today, Mike Lazaradis and Jim Balsillie, who joined the company in 1992, share the leadership role in the company as co-CEOs. The first Blackberry device came to market in 1999. Since then, RIM has consistently introduced many new and innovative products and services that are used by businesses and consumers around the world. The wireless solutions industry is an extremely competitive one, and, in 2002, RIM was sued for patent infringement by an American company, NTP. The case was finally settled in 2006, with RIM paying NTP $612.5 million.1 RIM has offices in North America...
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...Professor: Ms. Solza Grceva Student: Bjanka Tunteva 117671 Date: May 9th, 2014 TABLE OF CONTENTS Background…………………………………………………………………...…………3 Decision Making Process………………………………………………..………3-4 How the system supports the Decision Making Process……………..4 Security Breaching……………………………………………………………………5 Implementation of the System……………………………………………….5-6 Benefits of the Implementation………………………………………………... 6 Financial Analysis………………………………………………………………….7-8 S.W.O.T. Analysis………………………………………………………………………8 References……………………………………………………………………………….9 UNILEVER SECURES ITS MOBILE DEVICES Background Unilever is a $54 billion Anglo-Dutch multi-national company that operates in 57 countries, with headquarters in the UK and Netherlands. It is well known for their manufacturing brands such as Q-Tips, Ben and Jerry’s, Hellmans, Lux, Dove personal care products, Lipton tea, home care etc. With a portfolio of over 400 brands, Unilever is constantly growing, expanding and extending their projects for production of innovative products. However, in order to make informed decisions on how to act on innovative ideas, they first must understand and evaluate their risks and be able to grasp opportunities. In March 2004, Unilever’s senior management ordered the company’s top executives to be equipped with mobile phone devices to increase their productivity. The company selected BlackBerry mobile phones because they were the leader in their category and worked with email servers and multiple...
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...BLACKBERRY (SALES DECLINE) I. TIME CONTEXT: BlackBerry's share of the smartphone operating platform market dropped from 21.7% in July 2011 to 9.5% just a year later, according to comScore. Meanwhile, Apple's market share went from 27% to 33.4% in that time, while Google's share went from 41.8% to 52.2%. BlackBerry’s sales of smartphone is now continuously dropping II. POINT-OF-VIEW: In today's earnings report, BlackBerry said the $2.7 billion charge was based on the results of an analysis of its long lived assets. Separately, there were "pre-tax restructuring and legal and financial advisory charges of approximately $266 million." The $4.4 billion loss compared to a profit of $14 million in the same quarter last year. BlackBerry lost $965 million in Q2 2014, primarily because it overestimated how many new phones it would sell. Excluding all of the one-time charges, BlackBerry's operating loss was $354 million for the quarter, up from an adjusted loss of $248 million in the prior quarter and up from $114 million in Q3 2013. Despite the bad news, BlackBerry CEO John Chen struck a positive tone. “With the operational and organizational changes we have announced, BlackBerry has established a clear roadmap that will allow it to target a return to improved financial performance in the coming year,” Chen said in the earnings announcement. “While our Enterprise Services, Messaging and QNX Embedded businesses are already well-positioned to compete in their...
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...Table of Contents 1. Background ………………………………………………………… 2 2. Objectives of the Research………………………………………… 4 3. Methadology……………………………………………….………. 5 4. Executive Summary………………………………………………. 6 5. Findings………………………………………………………….... 7 6. Conclusion and recommendations……………………………….. 11 7. Appendices…………………………………………………………… 13 Background About Apple Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. About RIM Research In Motion Limited (RIM) is a Canadian telecommunication and wireless device company best known as the developer of the BlackBerry smartphone. Target markets for the iPhone and BlackBerry are starting to overlap. The iPhone is a media consumer's dream, playing movies and music with ease. But it's not as finely tuned for the corporate user; large companies have resisted letting employees use iPhones on corporate networks The iPhone accounted for 16.1% of the market in the quarter, compared to 10.9% the same period a year ago, IDC said in releasing its quarterly report Friday. In terms of shipments, Apple shipped 8.8 million units, a 131.6% increase from the 3.8 million shipments a year ago. RIM, meanwhile, saws its share drop to 19.4% from 20.9% a year ago. Nevertheless, the company shipped 10.6 million units, a 45.2% increase...
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...In studying the difficulties of the company Research In Motion (RIM) it can be seen that there has been a legacy of leadership that may have lead the company to the downfall that it is going through at this time. On the website Glassdoor.com, the comments of former employees of the once leading tech innovation firm point in a direction that states that the company was slow to move on ideas and tended to promote people based on tenure and a sense of nepotism rather than on merit (Glassdoor 2012). There has been a growing sentiment from the people that work for the Blackberry creator that leadership is missing the mark with innovation and are not going to be able to keep up with the competitors in the market because of the lack of ability to manage IT projects is a concise manner which has led to the company not being able to field its long awaited BlackBerry 10 operating system (Glassdoor 2012) . So who is responsible for not making the right decisions at the company? Who can the stockholders blame for the company not being able to keep up with the trends of the trends of the mobile market? To answer those questions one would have to look at who the most recent former leaders of the company along with the current regime. Under the leadership of co-CEO’s Mike Lazardis and Jim Balsillie RIM became the company on the leading edge of wireless technology (Minato 2012). The BlackBerry brand was the brand of phone to have if you wanted or needed a device that was as much...
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...of the New Year. Next Tuesday, Google is expected to announce its long-rumored Nexus One smartphone. It is undoubtedly designed to run the Google Android operating system for cellphones, which the search giant introduced more than a year ago. Android was envisioned as a major breakthrough in cellphones because it offered an "open" operating system i.e., one that other companies could use and design applications for. At the time, this strategy was compared to that of Microsoft Windows, which broke the market hegemony of Apple’s decidedly non-open OS in the mid-1980s and within a decade, turned Apple into a niche company. This time around, the new Android phones were supposed to break the hegemony of the Apple iPhone. So far, it hasn’t quite worked out that way with Android. A number of cell phone companies notably Motorola, HTC, and Samsung have adopted Android and seen impressive sales. However, this time around Apple, though still exhibiting much of its old "closed" and proprietary ways, has learned some important lessons over the last 20 years. For one thing, Apple understands, better perhaps than any company on the planet, the importance of being not only perpetually innovative but with a vast and loyal army of Apple fanatics behind it to...
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... Dheeraj SurI JL12PGDM060 ------------------------------------------------- Company Background RIM Mike Lazaridis founded the wireless device company Research in Motion (RIM) in 1984 which has its headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario. Their best known product is the Blackberry handheld communication device. RIM not only produces the BlackBerry, but also develops its own software for its devices as well as developing and selling embedded wireless data components ("Research In Motion"). In 1999 the first BlackBerry was released. It used the same hardware as the Inter@ctive pager 950 - a pager RIM worked on with RAM Mobile Data and Ericsson. The first BlackBerry also ran on the Mobitex network which was developed by Ericsson and improved by RIM. The BlackBerry was the first device that solved the "two mailbox" problem. This describes the issue of having your mail on both your handheld device and corporate machine. RIM solved the problem by "pushing" the mail to the connected devices using middleware software and a network operations centre. This was how BlackBerry allowed its users to be "always on,...
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...Operating system : An operating system (OS) is a collection of software that manages computer hardware resources and provides common services for computer programs. The operating system is an essential component of the system software in a computer system. Application programs usually require an operating system to function. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also include accounting software for cost allocation of processor time, mass storage, printing, and other resources. For hardware functions such as input and output and memory allocation, the operating system acts as an intermediary between programs and the computer hardware, although the application code is usually executed directly by the hardware and will frequently make a system call to an OS function or be interrupted by it. Operating systems can be found on almost any device that contains a computer—from cellular phones and video game consoles to supercomputers and web servers. Examples of popular modern operating systems include Android, BSD, iOS, Linux, OS X, QNX, Microsoft Windows, Windows Phone, and IBM z/OS. All these, except Windows, Windows Phone and z/OS, share roots in UNIX. Smartphone A Smartphone, or smart phone, is a mobile phone built on a mobile operating system, with more advanced computing capability and connectivity than a feature phone. The first smartphones combined the functions of a personal digital assistant (PDA), including email...
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...Research in Motion (RIM) was a company that many thought was the dominant force in the wireless industry. Their signature product, the BlackBerry, was “synonymous wireless e-mail, spawning countless imitators and creating a product category where none existed before” (Castaldo, J., 2007). Surely RIM was poised for success; however, three short years later, the industry is wondering if RIM can compete with the likes of Apple and Google with their new devices running on their revolutionary iOS and Android operating platforms. The future of wireless industry is constantly improving and the future looks promising for “smartphones” with internet capabilities. The trend shows that more and more cellular phone users are now upgrading their handsets to smartphones. Statistics that tracked sales of phones in the United States showed that in January 2010, “234 million Americans subscribed to mobile phone plans”. Of these, 42.7 million owned internet-accessible smartphones, which represented an 18 percent increase over a three month period (Practical Ecommerce, 2010). RIM was one of the original companies that first changed the way we perceived what a cellular phone could do. The market is once again being revolutionized, in order to stay competitive in this evolving market; RIM needs to decide what steps to take to ensure success in the future. Background and History RIM was one of the first major technology companies to originate from Canada. The company was founded in 1984 by Mike Lazaridis...
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...BlackBerry is a line of mobile e-mail and smartphone devices developed and designed by Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM) since 1999. [2] BlackBerry functions as a personal digital assistant with address book, calendar, memopad and task list capabilities. It also functions as a portable media player with support for music and video playback and camera and video capabilities. BlackBerry is primarily known for its ability to send and receive (push) Internet e-mail wherever mobile network service coverage is present, or through Wi-Fi connectivity. BlackBerry is mainly a messaging phone with the largest array of messaging features in a smartphone today, including auto-text, auto-correct, text prediction, support for many languages, keyboard shortcuts, text emoticons, push email, push Facebook, Twitter and Myspace notifications, push Ebay notifications, push instant messaging with BlackBerry Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, AOL Instant Messanger and Yahoo Messenger; threaded text messaging and a customizable indicator light near the top right of all Blackberry devices. All notifications and conversations from applications are shown in a unified messaging application which third party applications can access also. Many of these applications would have to be running in the background of other phones to be used. BlackBerry's push gives BlackBerry devices their renowned battery life. All data on the phone is compressed through BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS)...
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...Abstract The purpose of this study is to analysis changes management in the RIM Company. The study investigated how well the external and internal changes in RIM and analysis the environment remote effects on the company transformation. The research design included literature review, data collection, data analysis and recommendation. It is no longer the era of BlackBerry, as one of famous company in Canada. Before the iPhone launched on, BlackBerry seems like a legendary brand in cell phone industry, since they create the convenience EMAIL push service. Likeness, just five years ago, “BlackBerry” was virtually synonymous with “Smartphone.” It was well on its way to becoming a generic trademark, like Kleenex or Band-Aid, that would seemingly forever be associated with its entire sector (Thierer, 2012). In order to research how the BlackBerry can be changed and manage the change, the paper as qualitative research to analysis the external and internal changeability. The process of writing paper is followed the Lincoln and Guba’ evaluative criteria (1985) that based on credibility, transferability, dependability and conformability. The data collections use searching journals, web source, and online library. The PEST analysis implement on data analysis. Background of the company BlackBerry Ltd (formerly known as Research In Motion Ltd) is telecommunication and wireless equipment company headquartered in Waterloo, Canada. It started operations in 1984 with a vision...
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... Question: 1 The biggest task for any of Blackberry in today’s era is to implement the effective marketing strategy with the endorsement of accurate marketing mix. Through initiatives & marketing strategies company attempts to capture maximum returns - this entire practice refers to value based marketing. Here Blackberry is in consistent effort to create a strong brand which influences consumers to give constructive feedback. Value based marketing starts with escalating correlation of sales and marketing. One of the core concepts of Marketing is Holistic Marketing concept, where everything matters in marketing is acknowledged. Wider and incorporated outlook is essential for the developing, implementing and designing marketing strategies for Blackberry. For RIM it’s inevitable to see the challenges from brand’s viewpoint but it’s not complete without considering consumer’s perspective. Once the market’s needs have changed, Blackberry should shift with it. [pic] • The complex market of phone industry forces Blackberry to deliver variety of differentiated products with fast pace in global market. All products should be distinguished with each other with the means of functionality and should be able to engage customer with unbeatable features and designs. Here the Holistic Approach comes in light and it binds customers, network of suppliers, internal team & partners in a single knot. Blackberry should see the larger picture to increase brand value...
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...technology, more specifically, the e-mail wireless communications, made the organization’s intellectual property a prime target for adversaries that were not involved in the technological innovation industry, but for patent holding firms that were sitting in the background waiting patiently for a big fish to fall prey of their treachery. The success of these patent holding firms in the patent infringement litigation arena opened the gates for RIM’s industry competitors to scavenge from the patent holding company prey. Some of the challenges RIM faced to protect their intellectual property ignited a myriad of legal battles that wounded the Blackberry giant fatally from which RIM never recovered totally to this date. Below are summaries of litigation battles that originated after RIM, amongst other companies, decided to ignore a licensee contract agreement proposed by a Virginia based holding company in the year 2000. The US intellectual property holding company that sent the memorandum notice to RIM as well as to other technology companies and initiated the downfall of RIM was New Technology Products (NTP). 1. New Technology Products (NTP) Vs. Research in Motion (RIM) In 2001, NTP, an intellectual property holding company of at least 50 US patents, which focused on inventions in the fields of wireless email and Radio Frequency (RF) antenna design, filed a suit against RIM for patent infringement. NTP was known from actively pursuing and enforcing its patents rights primary...
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...Adapting to the External Environment: Recommendation to BlackBerry Ltd. 1. Introduction Blackberry had been popular around the world, especially in North America in 2000’s, and it represented a kind of fashion among young generation. It was one of the daily routines to see people using blackberry phones anytime and anywhere; for example, young people texted to each other by using unique keyboards, and business people used it for the internet, texts, address books, schedule management, and so on. Blackberry’s phones were stylish and revolutionary with high technologies and lots of tools in that period. However, there are few opportunities to see those who are using it recently. People shifted to iPhones or smartphones of other companies, such as, Samsung, LG, and Nokia. Then, why is not blackberry popular anymore? Are there any exact reasons or factors for that it failed in the market? These questions are important and necessary for the company to make the company stable and set it back to the market again. The reason why the sales of Blackberry declined greatly must not be only because of the change of the trends. It is essential to analyze the factors of sales decrease to survive in the competitive market. One of the important factors is adaption to the external environment which is necessary for all of the industries. Apple is one of the best examples that could adapt to the market pretty well. Steve Jobs placed emphasis on small devices, such as iPods instead...
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...------------------------------------------------- History Mike Lazaridis - Founder and former co-CEO of BlackBerry The first BlackBerry device, the 850, was introduced in 1999 as a two-way pager in Munich, Germany. The name BlackBerry was coined by the marketing company Lexicon Branding. The name was chosen due to the resemblance of the keyboard's buttons to that of the drupelets that compose the blackberry fruit. In 2003, the more commonly known smart phone BlackBerry was released, which supports push email, mobile telephone, text messaging, Internet network. BlackBerry first made headway in the marketplace by concentrating on email. RIM currently offers BlackBerry email service to non-BlackBerry devices, such as the Palm Treo, through its BlackBerry Connect software. The original BlackBerry device had a monochrome display, but all current models have colour displays. All models, except for the Storm series and the all-touch Torch 9850/9860 have a built-in QWERTY keyboard, optimized for "thumbing", the use of only the thumbs to type. The Storm 1 and Storm 2 include a Sure Type keypad for typing. Originally, system navigation was achieved with the use of a scroll wheel mounted on the right side of phones prior to the 8700. The track wheel was replaced by the trackball with the introduction of the Pearl series which allowed for 4 way scrolling. The trackball was replaced by the optical track pad with the introduction of the Curve 8500 series. Models made to use iDEN networks...
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