Is RIM Going Down?

For the last several month I've been thinking about the future of developing for BlackBerry and whether it even makes sense to bet on the BlackBerry OS. The learning curve for BlackBerry development is very steep, which makes it a huge hurdle for the newcomers to the platform, but works for the advantage of the companies and developers who already took the plunge and were swimming the quirky waters of BlackBerry OS for some time.

So basically what I am saying is that for existing BlackBerry developers is it a very sweet spot to be in if BlackBerry OS is to there to stay. With less than 10 thousand apps on the app world compared to more than 150 thousand on Android and more than 250 thousand on iPhone, there is a good chance your app will get noticed and get traction; especially if your app is somewhat polished since many of the apps on BlackBerry at the moment look absolutely horrible.  But the if I mentioned earlier about BlackBerry staying in the game, at least long enough for developers to rip any benefits in indeed one big if.

Is RIM in trouble? Yes, I think it certainly is.

My contemplations began a long ago and I keep finding more and more reinforcements to this as time goes by, or maybe just more and more people are starting to realize it now as the revenues of RIM are plummeting and the market share is shrinking instead of growing with the overall growth of the smartphone market share. It surely does not look good anyway you look at it.

The upcoming BlackBerry developer conference seem to be struggling to find audience as well, as I have been getting tons of emails with more and more steep discounted registration fees, to the extent when it seems they will soon start actually paying people to attend.

A recent find to the collection was this article on business insider about how noone gives a damn about BlackBerry OS:

• No one who buys BlackBerry products actually cares about the BlackBerry OS.

• RIM's greatest assets are its email service (on BlackBerry phones and back-end server setup), BlackBerry Messenger, and the BlackBerry brand. These could all be moved over to Android, and none of them relies on the BlackBerry OS.

• RIM's mobile app platform is garbage compared to Apple's or even Google's. An Android BlackBerry would be able to take advantage of the fast-growing Android app platform, and RIM wouldn't have to waste any money nurturing it.

• RIM still has good relationships with most carriers. So an Android-based BlackBerry could receive top billing from carriers, versus rival Android devices from Motorola, HTC, Samsung, and others.

• If RIM joined the Android camp, it would be a HUGE boost for Android, and a big problem for Apple, which would lose even more platform share to Android. Developers might seriously have to start thinking about Android first, and Apple's iOS second. (There are still some major problems with Android's app market, but those can be worked out.)

• For illustration, if RIM were an Android vendor in Q2, Android would have had 35% of the world's smartphone market, per IDC, versus Apple's 14%. Instead, RIM had 18% -- down from last year -- and Android had 17% -- up huge from last year.

• Doesn't a BlackBerry Droid sound sexy to you?

The article may come as a joke to some, but if you think about it and you know [intlink id="75" type="post"]realities of development on different platforms[/intlink], this actually starts to make a lot of sense.