RIM Blackberry's changing contours; from executives to teenagers

Long considered as a device catering to the enterprise segment preferred by corporate executives wanting to do business-on-the-move, Research In Motion's (RIM) smartphone Blackberry has now got a new category of users -- teenagers of the country.

Playing catalyst to the creation of a new landscape for Blackberry in India is the obsessive interest shown by the country's teens on social networking sites like Facebook and applications like chatting.

"We are witnessing a large number of teenagers using Blackberrys and applications like Blackberry Messenger which helps them send messages for free, instantly, to any other Blackberry user in the world, are very popular among them," RIM's global chief marketing officer, Keith Pardy, said on the sidelines of an event here.
       
Pardy refused to give any empirical data supporting the trend, just maintaining that the company has got to a position where corporates and retail subscribers share a 50:50 ratio.
       
However, a senior RIM official said that in December 2009-February 2010 quarter, the company witnessed a never-before trend -- the share of retail customers had shot up to 80 per cent of total sales.
       
"Many of them have to be youngsters," the official said.

Business consultant Harish Bijoor called it a change which RIM would have observed in hindsight, through the sales data of the last year, when telecom infrastructure in India strengthened, and has hence, started targeting the newer set of users.

"According to a proprietary study done by us, 28 per cent of people under 25 years use smartphones for social networking, thus augmenting the telecom company's revenue per user (RPU)," Bijoor said.
      
RIM surely realises that it makes little business sense to associate itself as a phone purely for businessmen and executives, hence they are changing the positioning in a concerted way by introducing newer applications, he added.
       
Pardy said the Canada-headquartered company is very serious about the Indian market and in a first for any market globally, has launched an India-specific video in their "Love What You Do" campaign, which Bijoor says is aimed at youngsters.

"India is young, and the phones will have to be young. Focus on relevance to the youth, originality and innovation to
bring better applications are the key," Bijoor said.