Downloading BlackberryNew users, without a vested interest in a BlackBerry, are likely to choose an e-mail-capable smart phone instead, as soon as prices fall substantially. Ken Dulaney, an analyst with the Gartner Group, predicts that smart-phone buyers in the future will outnumber BlackBerry purchasers 10 to one. The wireless carriers are eager to expect six-ounce cellphone to have the capabilities of a laptop computer. Adding e-mail, for example, means we have to sign up for data services in addition to voice calling plans. But there's a catch: for that nifty wireless synchronization, your e-mail must be on a certain kind of server found in corporate networks, not on home PC's. If you're not using Microsoft Outlook and a company network, you are not likely to be eligible for instant e-mail and calendar synchronization. Strategic questions, more than technical obstacles, bedevil BlackBerry. Consider the example of Wang Laboratories, the minicomputer company that in 1976 introduced the first stand-alone word processor. For about seven years, it led the category that it had created, reaching a market cap of $5 billion before gradually losing out to the multipurpose PC and, for sundry reasons, burrowing into bankruptcy. Research in Motion stands about where Wang did in the early 1980's. Just as RIM added a phone to the BlackBerry, Wang added number-crunching capability to its word processor. Wang also tried to adapt its software for the high-volume, low-price world of PC's. This, too, RIM is attempting, though timidly, as one would expect of a company extracting high margins from its hardware business. In June 2003, RIM announced plans to license what it called BlackBerry Connect to phone manufacturers: BlackBerry functionality on non-BlackBerry hardware via blackberry software download. More than a year later, no phone equipped with Connect has yet been released in this country. Whether BlackBerry Connect will be the full-featured equal of the proprietary BlackBerry is ''the question of the hour,'' says Mr. Dulaney of Gartner. RIM must show more fortitude to see the software transition through than did Apple, which licensed the Mac's operating system to hardware manufacturers, then aborted when its licensees started to do well selling Mac clones. There is speculation that RIM plans to offer a BlackBerry slim enough to pass as a real phone handset. If it does, it will enter direct competition with the handset partners it is seeking for licensing of downloading BlackBerry software. They may well ask RIM to make up its mind: friend or foe? At present, RIM has an asset on its balance sheet that no other company in its industry does: an iconic brand name. The brand can live on and thrive, but only if the company does not try to face down the overwhelming competitive forces created by open standards, multiple suppliers and declining prices. While Good does not risk alienating hardware partners, its name is not a great asset, not even a good one. ''We're competing against Kleenex,'' says Mr. Shader. ''We should have chosen a noun.'' |