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RIM Reaffirms Commitment to Consumer Market With Renewed Focus

Posted: 02 Apr 2012 01:56 AM PDT

The media stirred up quite a bit of confusion about RIM from statements made during RIM's Q4 earnings call. I was listening in to the call and it was clear that many of the reports of RIM abandoning the consumer market were misinterpretations. We told you what RIM really meant and now RIM has gone on record themselves to clarify the confusion.

Check out their comments below from their blog:

Coming out of yesterday's Q4 Fiscal 2012 Earnings Call, we've received comments and questions from our customers about RIM's commitment to the consumer market. To be really clear, we are fully committed to the consumer market. In fact, we are aggressively focusing on delivering a unique and compelling user experience to all of our customers to enhance the way people engage, produce content, and manage data via mobile computing.

The consumer market is vast, so rather than trying to be all things to all people, RIM will focus its talent base and homegrown software and services on specific areas of the consumer market where BlackBerry® excels — which includes delivering a great mobile social and productivity experience – and we will look to existing and new partnerships to provide additional compelling apps and services that customers want and love.

We understand that buying patterns are rapidly changing for both consumers and enterprise customers. Smartphones are now just as likely to be purchased by consumers and taken into work to be used as their go-to work phone, as they are to be supplied by employers and used by employees on the weekend. We feel we are uniquely positioned to deliver a smartphone that consumers will be excited to use both personally and professionally that will also satisfy their employer's needs for security and data management.

BlackBerry® 7 was a big step forward in this journey. BlackBerry® PlayBook™ OS 2.0 is another strong example of our commitment to delivering a powerful mobile computing experience. As part of the lead up to BlackBerry® 10, we will continue to seek partnerships with application and service providers to deliver consumer features and content that are central to the BlackBerry value proposition. We believe these partnerships, combined with our core product offerings, will provide an extremely attractive experience to both consumers and our enterprise customers.

We are excited about our renewed company focus and hope our partners and customers are excited as well.

If you have questions or comments, please share them with us. We promise to read them all and come back and answer as many as we can.

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Posted by Ronen Halevy for ©BerryReview, April 2, 2012, 4:56 am. | RIM Reaffirms Commitment to Consumer Market With Renewed Focus | Leave a comment |

RIM announces Partnership with Coleman Outdoors

Posted: 01 Apr 2012 08:30 AM PDT

Well this one was unexpected, but, makes perfect sense when you look at the big picture. RIM CEO Thorsten Heins strongly indicated that Blackberry would be seeking and attempting to enter into strategic partnerships in the future and this would seem to be the first. Coleman is an industry leading company that specializes in outdoor camping and hunting gear. RIM sees a unique and untapped market and plans on targeting it with customized smartphones aimed the camping/outdoor/hunting person. Mr. Hein’s commented “this is a market segment that has not been focused on by any of our competitors and we believe there is a strong need for phones specialized to address the needs of the the outdoors community.” William Coleman, president and CEO of Coleman, indicated that “we have been looking into entering the smartphone market for several years now and we feel that Blackberry offers us a unique value proposition that our fans and equipment users can take advantage of.”

The future phones will be based on the current OS 7.1 software and will offer customized phones and software additions aimed at the markets outlined above. These additions have been developed by Coleman with Blackberry.

The new Blackberry Coleman phones, modified 9850 seen above, will feature customized apps and hardware developed by Coleman including:

GPS tracking of deer, moose, buffalo and other game
Geo thermal location software developed by Coleman to track the migration of game
Customized “Game Attraction System” using industry leading “Echo Hunting Game Sytems” voice calling
5 MP camera capable of night vision and heat tracking
Coleman developed software that will determine height, weight and age of any game captured on camera
Bluetooth tracking of ammo levels
Rugged exterior that has been tested to survive falls from over 1000 feet
Waterproof to 100 meters
Capable of sustaining heat temperatures of 752F
Patented Coleman multipurpose “thinset” knife that is retractable from the rear battery door
Custom battery with 3 times the battery life of regular BB7 models
Coleman patented “Buck Glass” that is two times the strength of Gorilla Glass II

The Blackberry Coleman phones will come in 3 styles that are modified versions of the Bold 9900, Torch 9850 and Torch 9810

Blackberry and Coleman have entered into agreements with leading Outdoors retailer, Bass Pro, to sell the new smartphones. The new Blackberry Coleman series will be available at most providers coming this summer and pricing will be announced in the next couple weeks