Case Study: Research in Motion Entering a New Era

WEEK 1 CASE STUDY

Satish Khadka
IAU ID: 104277
BUS 590 Business Strategies
Submitted To: Caesar Rana
March 18, 2016

Case Study: Research in Motion Entering a New Era

Brief Overview
Research in Motion is a telecommunication equipment company which was established
in 1984 by Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Fregin which is based in Canada. Later in 1992 Basillie
joined RIM as co-CEO. The main and widely known product produced by this company is
Blackberry which was launched in 1999 January. This company is high enterprise market
focused. This company had nearly 9 million subscribers till 2007. Here this case is related with
the RIM facing the issues related to the threat company is facing from the entrants of new
company in the market. The main rivals like Apple, Nokia, Motorola etc were coming up with
new products in the market. Here the company was in position how to deal with such situations
and maintain the position in the market.
Strategic Issues
Here in this case RIM was the company who was trying to expand the market position
and was focusing in huge market rather than a niche market. Since the market was growing there
were new competitors growing in the market, the company has more issues and challenges to
face. The main issues the company was facing was how can the company guarantee its longevity
in the market and as well as expand its market. Here the company was finding issues to compete
with the existing and new competitors in the market.
Analysis and Evaluation
Here in this case, the major product discussed is Blackberry. Life cycle of Blackberry has
been described. Blackberry is such a product which has faced every stages of product life cycle.
The different stages of product life cycle are: Introduction, growth, maturity and decline. Here
the key strategy of RIM was differentiation strategy which helped Blackberry to make it very

Case Study: Research in Motion Entering a New Era

much successful product. The major differentiation that RIM was able to provide to customers
was to deal emails through their mobile phones which made it very popular among the
customers. Company was coming up with new products and features so that they can retain their
employees and also expands their market as well. The cost of the company was increasing as
they were trying to make their product more different from others and provide more new features
to customers. The consumers of Blackberry in 2007 were nearly 9 million. The sales of
Blackberry were also increasing alongside the revenue. This was because company lowered its
selling price of enterprise product comparing to the consumers product. Here the human resource
of the company was more focused in the research field which helped company to gain more than
650 patents by the late 2006. This was the growth stage of the Blackberry.
Here the gross margin was low of RIM compared to other competitors and cash position
was also low, which was negative part of the company. This shows that RIM was comparatively
weaker in financial position. Nokia was gaining more n more market share from the RIM. Later
Blackberry was not able to be more innovative than other competitors like Apple, Samsung
which lead them to lose more market share and the decline phase of Blackberry started.
The major strengths of Blackberry were its security feature which was major
differentiation feature from other competitors. One of its strength is its brand name itself. It had
one of the major portion of the market which was also strength for the company but could not
hold that position for long time due to failure to cope up with changing market.
The major weaknesses of the company were lack of innovations by the company,
underestimation of the competitors like failure to focus in consumer market which made the
company to react late n decline of the blackberry. One of the weakness is Blackberry had only
few applications compare to Apple and Android.

Case Study: Research in Motion Entering a New Era

One of the major opportunities for Blackberry was to capitalize the consumer market as
well. The newer trends were growing in the market which was also one of the major
opportunities for the Blackberry. Now, talking about the threats, existing and the new
competitors were one of threats for Blackberry.
Recommendations
Here blackberry was a company which was top for some period of time and later it went
to decline phase. There were major weakness and threats for Blackberry. If the company could
deal with such weakness and threats then Blackberry could change its fortune and can return to
growth phase. The various recommendations to overcome those weakness and threats are as
follows:

Blackberry was only focused to niche market that is enterprise segment, so the company
should focus on the groups who are concerned with security features like military personnel

which can also help to make the company reach to the growing phases.
RIM was strong with innovation at early stages but failed to come up with new innovation
while being in growth stage. So the company must make their research team strong with new
recruitment and strong team to come up with new innovative products which can compete

with major companies like Apple and Samsung.

Company must make its strength of focus strategy work again. Security a feature was its
strength so giving emphasizes to that feature and bring new products with other features

similar to competitors can regain the market position.

RIM must also diversify the products like Apple does by launching Iphone, Ipad, Ipod etc. it
can also produce the products for consumer market as well which can help to make the
market wider for RIM.

Case Study: Research in Motion Entering a New Era

References
Pearce II, J. A., & Robinson, R. B. (2015). Strategic Management: Planning for Domestic and
Global Competition (14th Ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Education.