External analysis

POLITICAL
There is a friendly political climate in North America especially in USA , it helped the smart phone industry especially RIM to flourish . a recent survey show that the users of smart phones will overtake feature phone users by 2011(Nielsen wire 2010) . The actual challenge for RIM has been in countries like China, Indonesia India and UAE where the countries have raised concerns the security feature that the blackberry provides to users

Another major political concern is that some of the European countries like UK, Germany etc have imposed strict regulations with respect to hygiene and safety standards for manufacturers which may impact the operations of RIM like faces pressure from the usage of toxic contents, energy usage and recycling

ECONOMIC

is fairly elastic and it is mostly based on consumer income but the recent economic down turn has had an impact as people are not willing to spend on a product unless the price is right and it offers the promised values

but the smart phone industry is expected to grow at fairly steady pace and the developing economies of India, China,Latin America provides a platform for RIM (according to economic times 2009).

Since the sales of blackberry are made all around the word , the fluctuation in exchange rates can suddenly make blackberry competitive The exchange rate fluctuation can have a profound impact on blackberry especially in price sensitive markets like India and China.

Social

in a country like USA sales of blackberry seems to be fairly high during the period of November to December, the holiday season

another huge socio cultural factor which have an impact on RIM is the ever increasing usage of blackberry by antisocial elements which will have an impact on the brand image of the company and its product because the consumer markets in religiously