Like any self-respecting tech outfit, we follow technology sites and blogs from the US religiously. As a result, we went into the BlackBerry Developer Conference in Singapore with the mindset that RIM was a company floundering and was in the precipice of losing relevance. But boy, were we wrong. Dead wrong. While BlackBerry may not be doing that well in the US, it seems that the Canadian company was flourishing in Asia, and has managed to grab a large share of the market in several countries which include Thailand and Indonesia. So why all the reports of the doom and gloom?
“To be blunt, it’s lazy reporting,” says Alec Saunders, VP of Developer Relations and Ecosystems Development for RIM. “If you sit down and looked carefully at RIM’s business, you can’t walk away with notion that the company is going nowhere. This is a company that grew its subscriber base from 50 million to 70 million – that’s a 44% growth rate in one year.” He adds, “We got no debt on the books and the business is profitable with no debt – it’s not in trouble. It just boggles my mind.”
Alec also compiled a couple of myths that’s usually associated with the brand and we’ve managed to include them all below. The key message that we felt RIM wanted to impart to the press during the whole conference was that the company may not be doing well in the US, but it’s doing a killing in Asia and in other, larger markets. Let’s just hope the love spreads everywhere, eh?
