RIM named Fortune’s number 1 Fastest Growing Company.
RIM’s booming sales have made it Fortune’s number 1 Fastest Growing Company. Over the past decade, RIM has sold around 65 million phones to over 28.5 million subscribers. This has grown RIM’s stock market capitalization from $96 million to $42 billion in the process. BlackBerry devices continue to dominate the smartphone market with a 56% share of the $12 billion U.S. in revenue.
Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie are confident that RIM can handle their rate of growth but Lazaridis admits that “sometimes we have to put the brakes on.” He goes on to say, “We’ve shown that we can handle annual 100% growth. I’m not sure we could handle more than that.”
The history of RIM is well known but Fortune’s interview reveals an incredible sales strategy on the part of Balsillie that solidified BlackBerry as the corporate standard. As Jim made constant trips back and forth between the US and Canada, he would meet with enterprise customers all over North America. “Every time I’d go up there and present, I’d sit there and ask, ‘Who here uses Microsoft Exchange?’” he remembers. “And two-thirds would raise their hands. Then I’d say, ‘Who here would like to get e-mail on their belt for free?’” He collected business cards and sent “e-mail evangelists” — kids just out of college — back to get the bankers up and running. Within a year the BlackBerry had become a staple on Wall Street. “It was a puppy dog sale,” he says. “‘Take a puppy dog home, and if you don’t like it, bring it back.’ They never come back.” Continue reading about Balsillie and Lazaridis’ past, current and future strategy for RIM and BlackBerry
RIM has just introduced a new version of the BlackBerry Smart Card Reader, which will help keep your organization’s BlackBerry devices and desktops secure. The new BlackBerry Smart Card Reader is a lightweight, wearable, ISO 7816 compliant card reader that enables proximity controlled access to a user’s BlackBerry and computer.
The Card Reader uses Bluetooth 2.0 with advanced AES-AES-256 encryption to enable secure pairing and communications between the reader, BlackBerry, computer and PKI applications.
The new BlackBerry Smart Card Reader features:
Enhanced Design – a sleeker design measuring only 3.98” x 2.4” x 0.57” and weighing only 2.26 oz. makes the peripheral more comfortable to wear. It also features a larger display and backlighting for easier viewing, as well as power management features that can extend battery life between charges (900mAh integrated lithium ion battery).
Increased Security – when used with the BlackBerry® Enterprise Solution, the new BlackBerry Smart Card Reader offers additional security options that can be set by the IT administrator.
Additional Content Protection – IT administrators can configure settings to allow handset passwords to work only if the BlackBerry Smart Card Reader is within range. These settings add another layer of protection on top of the handset password and will also be enforcable for a secondary password* required to unlock encrypted data on the handset.
More Complex Bluetooth Passwords – the previous BlackBerry Smart Card Reader model supported a randomly generated 8-digit numeric Bluetooth pairing PIN and this new model can now support more complex Bluetooth pairing PINs with both characters (symbols, letters, capital letters) and numbers.
Support for a Wide Range of Smart Cards – the BlackBerry Smart Card Reader supports all ISO 7816 compliant smart cards and provides out of the box support for Personal Identity Verification (PIV) cards, Common Access Cards (CAC) and Safenet 330 cards.
Plazmic has updated their CDK 4.7 to be compatible with the BlackBerry Tour 9630 and companies like Bplay and Elecite are pumping out themes for the device.
Elecite have re-exported 18 of their best selling themes to support the Tour 9630. These themes include: Ulterior, Solar, Eerie, Blossom, Mechanism, Noble, xBerry , Inspirat, Ascarii 2.0, PSB, Droid, Leopard, Grunge, Scion, iBerry, Distinct, Opus and Analog.
It seems a few carriers will be getting their hands on the BlackBerry Bold 9700. As you know, the BlackBerry Bold 9700 is the update to the Bold product line, making it in essence, the Bold 2. The device will be a smaller form factor than the original Bold, and will come with a battery casing reminiscent of the Bold 9000.
So far, we have pictures of the 9700 at both AT&T and Bell retail locations in the sales systems. We’re guessing a Fall 2009 launch date for the Bold 9700, and it’s good to see Bell picking it up as they missed out on the Bold 9000.
While BlackBerry devices don’t come with a built in compass, like the iPhone 3GS, the on-board GPS does provide enough data to calculate true North once a heading has been determined.
Compass Lite is an app for the BlackBerry Storm that has this basic functionality but differs from the other apps in that it uses a clean UI and graphics.
Blue Solutions Inc, the makers of Compass Lite, will be releasing an updated version to their compass software for BlackBerry. Features you’ll find in the update include:
The ability to store WayPoints (specific points of interest where the user can record a meaningful description about the particular spot).
A ‘Guide Me Back’ feature that will point the way from your current location to the WayPoint you choose. This is ideal for finding your car in that enormous parking lot.
The ability to change backgrounds: 5 stunning new backgrounds are in the works.
Multi-language support.
The ability to change the format of the Line of Travel and the Lat/Long.
Additional header graphics showing satellite signal strength.
On the Storm, the ability to change from portrait to landscape format and back.
Be sure to check this video out soon because it’s going to be pulled from YouTube any minute now. This is a prerelease device review so it’s important to take it with a grain of salt.
While the outside will likely not change by the time it comes to market, the software will for sure. The reviewer is using an outdated OS, and the device he’s using doesn’t even come with WiFi.
Even though the OS is outdated, the responsiveness of the device is incredible. The reviewer can bounce back and forth between the homescreen and the icon page with almost no latency.
Another interesting feature is how the memory is broken down. There is Device Memory, Application Memory and Media Card memory. On this reviewer’s device, there is 149.9 MB of application memory (nothing to boast about), 1.8 GB of internal memory (couldn’t more of this have been used for apps?) and 14.8 GB of Media Card memory.
It was good to see the device have the new BlackBerry Messenger with the QR code system, but again, the reviewer is using an old OS.
Again, the device is much more responsive. The reviewer describes the typing experience as easier, but doesn’t go into details about the underlying technology that is replacing SureType.
