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anonymous asked:


RIM’s Smart Phone Arms Race Escalates

Two weeks before the new Apple 3G iPhone was released, a ChangeWave consumer survey showed it was likely to have a tsunami-like impact on the smart phone market. We all know what happened next - an extraordinarily successful 1 million units sold in the first weekend.

But what does that mean for current market share leader Research In Motion (RIMM)?

The consumer survey showed the 3G iPhone catapulting Apple into the lead in terms of planned consumer smart phone purchases for the next 90 days. Note that RIM remains the leader among current smart phone owners in the consumer market, and RIM holds a huge lead in the corporate market.

Yet despite its current lead in both markets, RIM isn’t taking the Apple 3G challenge lying down. The Canadian manufacturer has multiple plans in motion to counter Apple’s momentum among consumers, including an already announced new product release (the Bold) and two likely additional product releases (the Thunder and Kickstart).

To get a sense of the market potential for RIM’s new smart phone arsenal, we surveyed 3,567 consumers on their reaction to the new RIM counteroffensive. The survey was conducted in the aftermath of the Apple 3G announcement (June 17-23), but before the new iPhone model was released.

Preparing For Multiple Battles

Consumer respondents were presented a brief description containing key features of RIM’s new smart phone models, along with a follow-up question asking them how likely they were to buy each model if and when it becomes available. The survey found the new RIM releases each showing considerable potential among consumers once they actually get into the marketplace.

- A total of 4% of respondents report they’re Very Likely to buy the new RIM/BlackBerry Bold when it becomes available. Another 13% are Somewhat Likely.

- Slightly less positive but nonetheless significant, 2% of respondents say they’re Very Likely to buy a RIM/BlackBerry Thunder when available. A total of 13% are Somewhat Likely.

- Another 2% say they’re Very Likely to buy a RIM/BlackBerry Kickstart when it becomes available, and 11% are Somewhat Likely.

The Victors and The Vanquished

Our recent surveys show Apple and RIM on a clear collision course in the consumer smart phone market, as the three new RIM phones get set to counterattack the market assault from the Apple 3G iPhone.

“These results show consumers hungry for all varieties of BlackBerry,” said analyst Tobin Smith, who added, “it appears like when it comes to the BlackBerry, the adage ‘if you build it, they will come,’ certainly holds true.”

We will, of course, closely measure the initial reaction once consumers have their new BlackBerries - and if it turns out that the initial reviews on RIM’s new releases aren’t great and consumer satisfaction goes down, then RIM will almost certainly receive rough treatment from the Street.

The strength of these early survey results on the demand for RIM’s new products points to a potentially powerful counteroffensive to Apple’s 3G iPhone, according to Smith. “The real losers in this smart phone battle will most likely be the second-tier players, who could find themselves increasingly pushed to the sidelines as the two Goliaths battle for market dominance.”

To find out which manufacturers are most at risk because of the RIM counteroffensive, we took a close look at the impact of the new RIM releases on the rest of the industry.

The survey found that current RIM customers are two-to-three times more likely to buy the new RIM models than the customers of other manufacturers. The survey also found that the new RIM releases have a significant potential to lure away customers from other manufacturers - with Palm (PALM), Motorola (MOT) and Samsung the most vulnerable.

Apple customers, on the other hand, appear least likely to buy any of the new RIM phones.

As the old adage goes, to the victor goes the spoils - and by the looks of things, Apple and RIM are both victors. The Apple iPhone has captured the hearts and minds of its user base, and so has the RIM BlackBerry. Fortunately for both, the global consumer and enterprise smart phone markets are big enough to support both Apple and RIM - it’s the other cell phone manufacturers that look like the real losers.



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wsueb asked:


RIM Patches BlackBerry mobil phone Security Hole

 

 

Previously, RIM had updated the BlackBerry mobil phone Unite softwarethat users run on their smart phones to patch the problem on the client side.

 

The fix, which was delivered in several separate updates to BES, addressed a security vulnerability in the PDF distiller component of the BlackBerry mobil phone Attachment Service, which runs on the BES. RIM first disclosed the flaw last week, but the bug gained attention Wednesday when the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), part of the Department of Homeland Security, posted an alert.

 

Attackers could exploit the vulnerability by getting BlackBerry mobil phone users to open malicious PDF files attached to e-mail messages. Successful exploits would compromise servers running BES, not individual BlackBerry mobil phone devices, RIM said in security advisories first published July 10.

 

A RIM spokeswoman said Friday that the company

 had received no reports of attacks and that updates were now available for BES.

 

Enterprise administrators can update to BES version 4.1 Service Pack 6 (4.1.6) for Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus Domino, RIM said in a revised advisory. An update to BES for Novell GroupWise pegged as 4.1.4 also patches the problem.

 

Administrators running editions of BES older then versions 4.1.6, or 4.1.4 for GroupWise, can instead apply one of several interim security updates posted on RIM’s download site.

 

Research in Motion patched a critical bug in its BlackBerry mobil phone Enterprise Server (BES) Friday to stymie hackers hoping to break into company networks by tricking users of the popular smart phone into opening rigged PDFs.



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Cyrus Afzali asked:


We’ve all been writing from an early age, starting with thick pencils and writing tablets that later gave way to word processors and computers. But as technology has made the mechanical process of writing much easier, something entirely different has happened to writing itself.

Most people view writing as something that’s useful, but not exactly vital unless you’re going into a career where it will be on regular display. As a result, we’ve become a society where the value of writing has been eclipsed by many other things, with an emphasis being put on skills that have the highest perceived market value. Good writing has also given way to time pressures and products like the Blackberry, which has given birth to a modified version of the English language that’s pecked out on keyboards worldwide every day.

At first glance, there might seem to be nothing wrong with all this. After all, we are supposed to be prepared for as many potential jobs as we can, right? Many people also feel with technology changing at a rapid pace, it’s all they can do to keep pace with new developments; there just can’t be time to practice and/or pay attention to “ancient” skills like writing.

Yet in many ways, the lack of writing skills is on display every day and in a bad way. In public relations, this often takes the form of bad marketing collateral filled with buzzwords that stand in the way from truly describing what a client actually does. During the “dot-com boom,” we had a million and one companies with “mission-critical solutions” promising to save the world of business; sadly, however, most of them have since died. This is not to say that if their material had been better written they’d still be here today, but there is a good chance that more editors and reporters would have been able to tell just what the heck they purported to do.

All too often in public relations, we focus on our role as messenger, but not on the message. As someone who had a decade-long career as a journalist before going into PR, I can’t tell you much fun it was to go through press releases trying to sort that out. Unfortunately for both the PR firm and their client, most of the time when a journalist is confronted with a situation like this, they’ll just give up. Think about it this way: If you had 100 people soliciting your attention with a pitch or marketing material every day, even if you gave them all 5 minutes, that would eat up darn near your entire work day. So while PR pros sometimes get aggravated at journalists and there’s an uneasy push/pull relationship, I wonder how many PR pros have ever considered the fact that it was their message that lost the opportunity?

In a client-service environment such as public relations, even the best writer can only do so much; for, at the end of the day, we have to come up with something the client is willing to sign off on, no matter what we might personally think of it. That said, we shouldn’t be afraid to give counsel to clients on the best way to present their message if it conflicts with their view. As a matter of fact, that’s precisely what they’re paying us for.

When you’re creating a message for a client, remember the first question a journalist will ask. “Why are you contacting me and why should I care?” It may sound harsh, but that’s what it really boils down to. You have to convince people you have something newsworthy; it won’t just stand on the opinion of the PR firm or their client. In the process of doing that, be bold and avoid using buzzwords. Instead, clearly articulate who your client is, what your story is and what makes that story compelling. Realize too that not every story idea you’ll be able to go out with will be earth shattering. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t make it interesting.

In short, sell but don’t oversell. If it’s a product or service, explain what makes it new and/or different and don’t try to make it into something it’s not. If you’re working with a professional services provider, such as an attorney or accountant, clearly present a new development in the reporter’s field of interest and go into detail as to why this will have a newsworthy impact on the beat the reporter covers. Reporters are almost all overworked, and they love nothing more than getting tipped off to a development that will have a big impact on an industry they follow.

Obviously, you probably won’t get a major hit every time, but over time, you’ll likely find the strategy works. If strategies like this were adopted more broadly, over time it might even be possible for the PR industry to get people to realize that PR involves far more than the celebrity publicity-type fluff that they see on TV news and entertainment shows. Better still, campaigns based on pitches and marketing material that are absent fluff and have plenty of value-added information, such as clear descriptions and relevant statistics, will get much better results for the client. With any luck, this will accomplish a goal that’s thus far been rather elusive for the industry: Improving client-retention rates.



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