RIM's Touching New BlackBerry Plans
Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM) (Nasdaq: RIMM - message board; Toronto: RIM) is said to be preparing a whole new "9000-series" operating system and device platform to take on Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL - message board), Google (Nasdaq: GOOG - message board), and others in 2008.
Context & Ripple Effects
This is a rumor-stage report with no confirmed specs: Unstrung has RIM said to be preparing an entirely new "9000-series" operating system and device platform, framed explicitly as a 2008 answer to Apple and Google. With no earlier corpus coverage of the program, the significance rests on who the target list names.
The choice of adversaries tracks the moment: Google's reach was expanding well beyond search heading into late 2007 — a proposed DoubleClick acquisition pending before regulators, a rumored set-top box effort, and an October U.S. search-share jump to 58.5% per ComScore — while Apple had made handhelds a mainstream consumer category. A hardware-centric vendor rebuilding its software stack from scratch is RIM acknowledging that the contest is now platform against platform.
First-order effects
- If the 9000-series ships as described, RIM moves from email-focused device maker to full mobile-platform competitor, giving its carrier and enterprise base a from-scratch OS to position directly against Apple's handset lineup through 2008.
- Apple gains a named, enterprise-rooted challenger attacking from the corporate side, and Google sees its brand attached as a rival platform target even before any handset of its own is confirmed.
Second-order effects
- A third heavyweight smartphone platform pressures developers and carriers allocating limited shelf space and engineering budgets across ecosystems, eroding whatever early exclusivity Apple has enjoyed among consumers and application builders.
- For Google — mid-fight over DoubleClick and rumored to be extending into TV via a set-top box — RIM's platform play is a signal that controlling the device software surface is becoming strategically entangled with search- and advertising-driven distribution.
Third-order effects
- If RIM follows through on a ground-up rebuild, the industry's dividing line shifts from smartphone-versus-feature-phone to sustained platform-versus-platform competition, favoring companies able to fund multi-year operating-system bets and squeezing those that cannot.
- The pattern points toward handset value concentrating in the software layer — whoever owns the OS and its ecosystem captures the leverage over carriers, developers, and service partners that hardware alone used to confer.
The trend: Mobile handsets are consolidating into contested software platforms, pulling hardware-first vendors like RIM into direct platform competition with consumer-internet giants such as Apple and Google.