This is a great article in Mobile Enterprise on what seems to be the downfall of Research in Motion. While the company was once the unquestioned leader in enterprise mobility, it has fallen far behind its more innovative competitors. Editor Tony Rizzo thinks this is due to the company losing focus on what made it strong – enterprise customers – in order to try and capture the consumer market, one that it would have a tremendously tough time competing in to begin with.

RIM: Where Is the Company We Knew and Loved?

I’ve seen RIM do many great things over the last 10 years. Its execution was once stellar, and the company drove mobile excitement – in the enterprise. But…as much as it pains a great many of us who have been and still are long-time and loyal BlackBerry users, the answer to the question – relative to the mobile times we live in today – is beginning to look like a “yes” here. When a company spends so much time on defense something clearly is wrong. The company’s recent inability to execute is now beginning to add up in non-trivial ways:

  • RIM has fallen at least two years behind the competition in terms of high-end product delivery (hardware, mobile apps, all of it) – on both the consumer and enterprise side
  • The original collective bread-and-butter “enterprise team” at RIM has, as far as I can tell, been overwhelmed by the consumer side
  • The consumer factions have no “Jobsian” visionaries and have dropped the ball enough times that it has finally negatively impacted top-line revenue in a significant way
  • The PlayBook…enough said, though its enterprise potential is still there

Is it the tip of the iceberg or can RIM recover? When RIM finally delivers its “next-generation” QNX devices next year, it will still find itself two years behind Apple and perhaps just a bit less behind the Androidians on the consumer front. Meanwhile, Windows 8, it’s Metro-derived interface, and Win 8 tablets will be poised to begin making serious enterprise inroads in 2012 (okay, you may not believe me on Win 8 tablets, but I’m ready to take some bets).

Read the entire post at Mobile Enterprise.

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ABOUT Corey Lewis

Avatar photoCorey Lewis is an experienced writer, editor, PR pro and marketer with a deep background in technology, social media, and internet tools and culture.