Is India the New Centre of Operations for RIM?

Anirvan Ghosh
Updated: Apr 19, 2012 10:01:06 AM UTC

Research in Motion, the maker of Blackberry smartphones, has had a horrid year in the US. Declining marketshare has hit hard on the sales front, and with no clear path on how to come out of the morass they find themselves in, RIM looks rudderless. Usually their global launches would happen in the US, the biggest market for smartphones in the world. But on Wednesday, their new Curve model was launched globally out of a hotel in Vasant Vihar in Delhi - quite a show with a dash of glamour thrown in.

Carlo Chiarello, Senior Vice President, Smartphone Business at RIM, was present, as was Patrick Spence, Executive VP, Global Sales and Regional Marketing. Together, they form the team that lead the designing, manufacture and marketing of their smartphones worldwide. It would have been better if CEO Thorsten Heins were present too, but he wasn't and maybe one reason was the firefighting he has been doing to restore investor confidence in RIM, which is at an all time low.

In India, the launch was upbeat. They have done much better in the emerging markets - in my earlier story on RIM's performance in India http://forbesindia.com/article/big-bet/blackberrys-success-in-india/29132/1 I said that the company has managed to increase its marketshare here from 10% to 13%, largely by successfully targeting youngsters with their BBM software and clever pricing plans. Since then, the RIM has focussed even harder on India - out went Frennie Bawa, who used to head India while commuting to and fro from Waterloo, Canada, the RIM headoffice, and in came Sunil Dutt, who used to head the personal systems group at HP, India. He is based out of India, and knows the market quite well.

Now this global launch of the Curve 9220 takes the focus a notch higher. For the first time you have global executives on a stage for a product that will first go on sale in India, and only then in other markets, most of them in the 'emerging' bracket. Chiarello said that before designing the new Curve, focus groups were formed in India to get feedback on what exactly they wanted. And so now you have a dedicated button for BBM. Press it and you go straight to the uber-popular BBM chat program, that you find youngsters busy with in metros, buses, autos and pretty much everywhere else. You also find more color schemes for the Curve, including pink, blue and red, something that has gained them a big and loyal set of women followers. And you get something that BlackBerry has never had before: FM radio.

Spence said that this was directly a result of the feedback they got from Indian focus groups. They all said that not being able to listen to FM radio was a dampener when most other phones in that price range (the new Curve is priced at Rs. 10,990) do offer that. So in came the FM, for the first time ever. Other features include a 2 MP camera which can also record videos, and this model does not support 3G. It does have Wi-Fi support and can run on EDGE networks. Lack of 3G doesn't matter in this segment as the service never became popular anyway, and while the camera should have been better, the features are still value for money.

While I got my hands on the phone and its cool new touchpad (not as good as the Bold 9900 but still better than the last Curve) I did not have enough time to test its battery life. Chiarello said that the battery is the largest ever for this model, while being light and thin - allowing for 7 hours of talktime. The phone itself is quite thin and compact - fits perfectly in your hand and relatively easy to type on compared to other Qwerty keypads in the market.

Interestingly, this makes you feel that RIM is focussing even more on the consumer while CEO Heins had said on March 30 at a conference in the US that they would re-double efforts to target the enterprise segment, which was its core market and where it slipped badly, as employees can now bring their own devices and Apple introduced BBM-like software last year, along with secure push-mail. Spence said that while that focus would certainly be there, its focus on the consumer segment in emerging markets would remain as steadfast as we saw the last 2-3 years.

There was momentary silence when Bollywood star Katrina Kaif, who made a glamorous entry at the launch, was asked by a journalist - "Last time you were in Delhi you said you use the phone for messaging. Now you are saying you love the Blackberry and chat on BBM. How come you changed so much in less than a year?" Amidst executives on stage looking on impassively and chuckles from the audience, she quickly recovered to say that she was a late-comer to the Blackberry family but is now a fan. She did clarify that she wasn't going to be the brand ambassador for RIM in India.

This launch is significant as it indicates that the focus of RIM, that is fighting back, has shifted firmly to the East at least for its lower priced models like the Curve. It will only get more aggressive from here on. But that said, we have yet to see a model from RIM that is truly multimedia - and as appealing as the Samsung Galaxy range. While the world over Apple has captured a major share of the smartphone market, its pricing in India - out of bounds for even the middle class - has meant that RIM's main competitor here is Samsung and Micromax, whose smartphones start Rs 6,000 onwards. At the price range of the new Curve, they have sleek phones that look more appealing to the young - and Samsung is very aggressive in this market - and on its way to displace Nokia as the leader.

True, right now RIM has a good model with the Curve, and BBM is popular - but when Android launches its own chat software, which will essentially do what the BBM does now, it will have nothing new to offer at that price range. For all its bullishness now, RIM would do well to make sure it has something more innovative to offer the next time round in the Indian market. For if this is the new frontier, it better be protected and the only way is to be a step ahead of competition. Right now, it is in step with them in emerging markets. Competitors like Nokia are ready with a new operating system and the Lumia series, Goodle will push through more innovations for low-cost mobiles, including a BBM-like chat, and the battle will heat up exponentially in no time. The new Curve will carry them through for some time - but soon, much more would be needed of them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.

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