RIM loses luster; Will new initiatives give BlackBerry top billing?

While Verizon Wireless is aggressively attacking the iPhone and AT&T with the release of the new Motorola Droid smartphone, more commentators are pointing out that it may very well be Research in Motion's BlackBerry business that will suffer.

In fact, the advent of smartphones with rich browsing experiences and the fact that an increasing number of employees are bringing their own Active Sync-capable smartphones through the back door of the enterprise threatens to hit RIM right where it hurts. BlackBerry devices today offer a poor browsing experience, and the company's devices aren't the ones being brought through the back door in droves. More likely, they are still part of the old establishment of enterprise-sanctioned devices.  

The BlackBerry Storm, also an exclusive to Verizon Wireless, was supposed to be RIM's big competitive play against the iPhone last year. The company's first release, however, was less than stellar with software glitches and poor reviews. RIM has fixed the issues with the release of the Storm 2, which now has enhancements that include WiFi and a new user input mechanism. But this time around, it lacks the marketing muscle from Verizon Wireless, according to Deutsche Bank in an analyst note last week.

"We think the original Storm did well in large part thanks to Verizon's marketing support," the firm wrote last week. "This time around it looks less likely that Verizon will step up, not with the Motorola Droid primed to ship, and the Palm Pre in the batter's circle warming up for Q1. While RIM may be able to eke out a good quarter filling the channel at Verizon, we think the outlook for RIM is worsening."

Recent AdMob figures show only two BlackBerry models in the top 25 handsets used to access the mobile Internet, Deutsche Bank noted.

RIM this week, however, came out swinging. It announced a plethora of initiatives at the BlackBerry Developer Conference 2009 designed to bring the company back to relevancy. The company promised a long list of new services platforms and extensions along with new and expanded partnerships to make life easer and more profitable for those developers looking to make BlackBerry apps.

"We've been beavering away on a lot of things these last couple of years," said RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie during his opening keynote Monday morning, according to FierceDeveloper. "This is not about thousands of islands of applications. It's about deep, rich integration to enable transformative experiences. Our view is that we have an environment with tremendous possibilities for contextualization."

The biggest of RIM's announcements was a new WebKit-based browser capable of full HTML rendering. Balsillie said the browser is expected to debut in early 2010. In August, RIM acquired WebKit solutions developer Torch Mobile, the maker of the Iris web browser for mobile devices.

Balsillie also promised a new services platform designed to enable developers to integrate more advanced services such as mobile advertising, geo-location awareness and push services for alerts.

The BlackBerry Application Platform is also getting a face lift. Enhancements include support for OpenGL ES for better graphics and a Java GUI builder to speed up development of user interfaces for BlackBerry applications. RIM said they will introduce carrier billing and in-app payment options in 2010.

Still more: Adobe and RIM announced an alliance aimed at aiding developers to make more compelling content for BlackBerry devices. The two already had an alliance to bring a full version of Flash to BlackBerry but now an expanded alliance will assist developers in using existing Adobe tools to create mobile content for RIM's devices.

The question now is: How fast can RIM come up with a compelling browser-based phone? It wouldn't say the vendor will bite the dust given the vast number of loyal enterprise users it still has and its relationship with multiple operators. But to stay on top it definitely needs a device that will receive top billing from an operator and those mobile workers who are starting to value mobile browsing over push email.--Lynnette