The target market of Black berry keeps changing with the need of time. Recently Black berry positions their new product Black berry Bold 9900 as a phone for the youth as well as the professional users. They were initially making phones for professional users only but now they have restated their product for the youth who need easy access to the internet at all times. Moreover, their innovation of colour options has been very successful highlighting gender preference products. E-mail facility and geographical locating services are very popular when we speak of Black berry phone.
Research in Motion is the company behind Black berry smart phones strategies themselves by making partnerships across the globe in the potential markets. They are able to achieve economies of scale in countries like India and Pakistan where cheap labour is easily available and control their labour cost effectively. Strategic alliance of Microsoft collaborating with Black berry to beat iphone series and capture a significantly large chunk of the market is the objective for the upcoming year and strategy is to look for regions where there are potential markets available. Black berry’s strategy for markets at their saturation point of smart phones is to introduce phones with additional features and innovative product designs.
Black berry is not only a significant name in the mobile industry, but it has achieved high recognition and fame in other electronic communicating products, which are incorporated with the brand name. Cellular phones are now smart phones with features that cater the desires and demands of customers from young age to adults with needs of communicating with the world on their finger tips. In fact, mobile phones have turned into a new gadget that encompasses almost all the electronic devices from as simple as a clock, to as comnplicated as a personal computer system.
Black berry is using Top-Down approach for pricing their smart phones by exploiting the market and building niches where best luxury is affordable by the elite class and merge themselves with value customers of today want. High class income groups can afford to buy the latest models of these phones, yet older versions are put up for sale on lesser prices. The additional benefit where Black berry attracts the customer is through the strategy of selling phone applications on affordable prices to retain their customers.
The increase in demand of rival product, iphone, will not be an effect of increase in the prices of Black berry phones or the complimentary features like the applications or accessories of the phone will be of much threat to the company. Black berry users are very much addicted to the device and its functionality. The strategy to retain its customers is to set customer oriented prices on the substitute features of the phone.
Black berry is working in a centralized organization structure with all the messages and emails ultimately go through one network. Whereas, the market structure Black berry exists in is an oligopoly where there are only few but large competitors in the run. These competitors are namely iphone, android and others providing products and services of the same kind. It is difficult for any other new company to enter into market in competition with these giant companies and meet up their level of proficiency in business management.
Black berry was the first phone to introduce mobile email services, based in Canada, and soon became market leaders. It is the most convenient held gadget with more user-friendly features than any other smart phone. iPhone is adopting strategies to rule out this leadership and have also introduced push mail features in their phones but users today still prefer Black berry when it comes to the importance of communicating over the internet. Competition with iphone is not easy but still Black berry uses strategies like positioning itself as a fun feature phone with sophisticated facilities to cater wide customer market.
In order to overcome the recession it should follow certain Marketing strategies like investing more on advertisement in order to position itself as the leading smart phone for business people and highly skilled people. In a way to achieve this it as sing contracts with large service providers in developing countries like India and China. Operational Excellence also helps RIM to decrease its selling price to meet living standard in other countries by bringing down the cost incurred in supply chain. This will result in increase in sell and it would attain market dominance.
Different market segments like niches with subdivision in professional class and the youth is targeted by Black berry but their pricing strategy does not change for each market. Their prices vary only on the basis of their technological changes in the product and worldwide prevailing prices of the products of competitors. Black berry has been perceived as a product, which is not cost effective for most of the enterprises that wish to deploy emails across an enormous part of their organisation. This has resulted in to the idea that almost all the competitors of RESEARCH IN MOTION’s to position themselves to produce cheaper equivalents of the well recognized and famed BlackBerry. Moreover, in the social perspective, Black berry must adapt to the expectation of the local community if it goes for launching the product in India. People have different tastes, styles, and activities, but one of the eternal social benefits that Black berry can have is that the technology related products do not see much global differences and social preferences.
Legislation such as the minimum wage or anti discResearch In Motionination laws affect the business of Black berry as voluntary codes and practices, market regulations, trade agreements, tariffs or restrictions, tax levies and tax breaks as well as the type of government are practices of the government.
One of the major economic issues is recession which, in case of, Black berry has no or less effect. Recession is not a pint to ponder over for Black berrys the prices have not gone down rather their strategies have excel their profits. The demand for Black Berry devices helped Research In Motion's third-quarter market share jump of about thirty five percent (35.7 percent to be exact) over the same quarter last year-the highest jump of any vendor. With a 19 percent chunk of the market, the company now trails Nokia in second place.
CONCLUSION
Conclusion No doubt, Black berry is one of the renowned companies of the world. It is likely that the launch of Black berry Bold 9900 will further the company’s objectives of global expansion. However to be successful in new markets Black berry will have to be vigilant in keeping track of the external and factors by capitalizing on its internal strengths. International and domestic regions are attractive developing markets for smart phones. This will provide an incentive to Black berry to go ahead with the product launch plan extending its network in the developing countries.
REFERENCES
John Sloman (2007), “Economics”. Sixth Edition
Whitney, L. (2009), “Smartphone market unfazed by recession”. par. 3.
Green, J. and Lion, E. (2006), “RESEARCH IN MOTION in the mobile enterprise Market”, OVUM, p. 4.
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Green, J. and Lion, E. (2006), “RIM in the mobile enterprise Market”, OVUM, p. 4.
Whitney, L. (2009), “Smartphone market unfazed by recession”. par. 3.
