Friday, March 30, 2012

RIM: We are not withdrawing from consumer market

RIM: We are not withdrawing from consumer market. Phones, Tablets, BlackBerry, RIM, Biz 0
30 March 2012 10:24 GMT / By Stuart Miles
  RIM has denied reports that it is pulling out of the consumer market following poor q4 financial results on Thursday.
“The claim that RIM has said it will withdraw from the consumer market is wholly inaccurate. Whilst we announced plans to re-focus our efforts on our core strengths, and on our enterprise customer base, we were very explicit that we will continue to build on our strengths to go after targeted consumer segments. We listed BBM, as well as the security and manageability of our platform, amongst these strengths,” Patrick Spence, RIM's managing director of Global Sales & Regional Marketing told Pocket-lint.
The comments come after the company revealed that revenue for the fourth quarter of 2012 was $4.2 billion, down 19 per cent from $5.2 billion in the previous quarter and down 25 per cent from $5.6 billion in the same quarter of fiscal 2011 as the company struggles to prove its relevance in the competitive smartphone market against Apple and Google powered Android handsets.
Research in Motion has told Pocket-lint that the company is in fact just making sure areas of the business work effectively and that it will look to "seek partnerships to deliver those consumer features and content that are not central to the BlackBerry value proposition, for example media consumption applications."
Away from the "re-focus" on business side, the company has also told us that ahead of the BlackBerry 10 the company plans to aggressively incentivize sales of BlackBerry 7 smartphones to both drive upgrades from older BlackBerry products to BlackBerry 7 and to attract feature phone customers to BlackBerry 7 for their first smartphone experience.
"We plan to refocus on the enterprise business and capitalise on our leading position in this segment," Thorsten Heins said in a conference call to the media on Thursday night. "We believe that BlackBerry cannot succeed if we tried to be everybody's darling and all things to all people. Therefore, we plan to build on our strength."
Some media outlets have taken that to mean that the company might ditch its consumer focus and try to distance itself from the youth market. But RIM are telling us that isn't the case at all.
"@BlackBerry remarks were wrongly interpreted. We are not leaving the consumer market," RIM's VP Developer Relations, Alec Saunders said on Twitter, backing up the company line.
Following the poor results, Jim Balsillie, former Co-CEO, has resigned as a director on the company’s board. In addition, David Yach, the company's CTO, is also stepping down after 13 years, while Jim Rowan, COO, Global Operations, has decided to pursue other interests.

Thank you Source : pocket-lint.com & team

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