We’ve seen this for a while – it’s not a new story. It’s the beginning of an end. Here is why I think that it was a number of startups and a series of mistrials and tribulations, and not a Fortune 500 company, that really led to RIM’s demise.

We’ve seen it in it’s messaging. We’ve seen it in its advertising. For many years now, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) has been considered RIM’s most valuable asset. But the problem lies within the proprietary messaging service’s very name – as the name suggests, BBM, in its current form, works only with RIM-built devices. This has led to a number of Silicon Vally garage-starters to enjoy the first mover advantages in the space. Of course, having Apple develop iMessenger did not help either.

Recognizing a need for cross-platform messaging services, a number of third parties – mostly small startups – have filled a gap that the Canadian tech giant, with years of expertise, could have easily filled. WhatsApp only charges $2 on an annual subscription basis after a one year trial. With relatively small development costs, and existing platform and a superior product, RIM could have easily charged $25/year or more.

But the emergence of WhatsApps (and a number of other third party messaging services) is not just competition, but rather a metaphor for the Waterloo-based company’s flawed strategic thinking. 

A paradigm shift needed to occur. Failed management and corporate bickering led RIM to completely miss the theoretical boat. They could’ve sold BBM to consumers for millions, and to corporate users for billions more.

RIM first started to fall apart in the early 2000’s when it became complacent in it’s R&D efforts. Hazy executives used their clouded judgement to mistakenly forecast their industry’s advancements further than simply email. At one time, RIM was on top of the world, with Ontario’s Kitchener-Waterloo region widely regarded as Canada’s technology hotbed – even Google made Waterloo it’s Canadian home. 

Once email became the norm for smart phones, however, RIM’s focus shifted to security, reliability and integration with apps such as BBM – all strengths which could be provided for devices built by other manufactures.

RIM needed to become a service company; they needed to accept the fact that they will never be a best-in-class hardware manufacturer when competing against category leaders such as Apple and Google’s Motorola.

For the consumer segment, RIM is at the mercy of its competitors. It needs to play within the existing framework of innovations such as the App Store and Android Market. RIM should take every positive feature from BlackBerry OS and develop each as third party apps for Android and iOS devices or, if its competitors allow, through licensing partnerships with Apple and Google integrated into their respective operating systems.

And to survive, RIM should focus the majority of time its time on keeping corporate users. Everyone knows that corporate sales is RIM’s real bread and butter. It needs to bundle its corporate segment strengths (security, encryption, and service reliability) to offer a compelling product. An offering that needs to seamlessly integrate with existing corporate IT infrastructures, but that is flexible enough to cope with the dynamic new services of the twenty-first century that will undoubtably deliver real business value.

The real question is, has the boat sunk? Is it too late?