Smart phone giant sets goal of 100m users
ORLANDO, FLORIDA : With its success in the global smart phone market, BlackBerry manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM) aims to open up areas of untapped potential in the Asia-Pacific region by adding to its existing roster of offices, while unveiling its next generation of smart phones in a bid to reach 100 million users.
Donald Morrison, Chief Operating Officer at RIM.
Chief Operating Officer of Research In Motion, Donald Morrison told Database that the company will put more resources into the Asia-Pacific region in terms of creating new presences in high-potential-growth countries where RIM has a strong relationship with network carriers.
In Asia-Pacific, the overall mobile phone markets covers 415.7 million units, with smart phones representing 69.6 million units. The global smart phone market covers around 173 million units.
RIM has an Asia-Pacific smart phone market share of 1.7 percent, compared with 48 percent share in North America and 20 percent globally, which reflects the opportunity for growth there.
Morrison also sees South East Asia as a market of exponential growth, with the BlackBerry 8500 and its BlackBerry Messenger, or BBM, application rapidly gaining popularity in Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines.
He predicted that not only the consumer market will take off, but the technology will also gain wide acceptance in the enterprise and government sector, especially in fields such as police departments and healthcare providers, due to its core security.
Gregory Wade, Managing Director of Southeast Asia at RIM, added that for this region, BlackBerry community, social networking and prepaid users are the key adoption drivers.
Moreover, the company will look for digital influencers in each community, for example female and youth ambassadors in schools and universities.
"University is a potential new market, with [the BlackBerry] as a tool to help students to share study materials online. This has already been implemented in the US and we are seeing the possibility to expand here." Wade noted.
BlackBerry AppWorld represents another growth strategy for the company. Within one year, RIM has expanded to 52 countries including Thailand, said Milke Kirkup, Director of Developer Relations at RIM .
To date, App World has over 20 million subscribers out of some 41 million BlackBerry users, with nearly 1 million apps downloaded each day.
According to the BlackBerry Alliance Summit, BlackBerry users are willing to pay as much as $5.99 (194 baht) for certain apps, compared with a willing spend of $2.70 (87.50 baht) from Android users and $1.99 (64.50 baht) with iPhone.
Revenue streams for mobile developers are moving away from one-time purchases as developers try to find alternative ways to monetise app transactions, such as through embedded advertising and premium service options.
It is estimated that mobile advertising is worth around $1.2 billion (38.9 billion baht), while online advertising is worth $40 billion (1.3 trillion baht) of the overall global advertising spend of $600 billion (19.4 trillion baht).
However, opportunities to monetise mobile advertising in the long term depend on the level of personalisation and contextualisation of the apps, a business model which still faces some challenges in terms of revenue-sharing and the length, type and frequency of ads based on research into consumer attitudes towards mobile adverting.
Kirkup continues that BlackBerry smart phones are based on Java, which is an industry-standard language allowing developers to build applications to run on other platforms, opening questions of revenue-sharing.
Moreover, the company is actively working with each country's network carriers and developer communities to increase the number of localised applications. In South East Asia, RIM has already established local developer communities in Indonesia and plans to do likewise in Thailand in the near future.
In addition, RIM also has its own Venture Capital fund, with $150 million (4.85 billion baht) to invest in potentially lucrative mobile application companies.
While applications and platforms are already transforming how smart phone users work and play, allowing customers to personalise their handsets with a choice of size of screen/keyboard and colours will be a key to further grow RIM's market share, said the company's co-CEO Mike Lazaridis.
BlackBerry 6.0, which will launch in the third quarter, is the next biggest innovation, and could help the company push towards its goal of 100 million users, up from over 90 million.
The new mobile operating system will enable convergence of work and leisure into one device and bring next-generation entertainment to the mobile.
These next-gen models will be faster, more powerful and simpler to use, while also promising impressive visualised user interfaces and seamless transitions between applications.
David Yach, RIM Chief Technology Officer, said the new OS will also boast more natural task-switching and multi-tasking capabilities, as well as double the battery life and better voice quality.
From : Bangkok Post
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