Description
The report details about Blackberry Playbook from the perspective of Product Management and how could the company have avoided the failure.
BLACKBERRY PLAY-BOOK
A Product Insight
Submitted by
Abel Alexander Adil Anwar Amitava Manna Amritanshu Mehra Ankit Sharma Ravi Gupta Shobhit Uttreja Taranpreet Singh Mayank Gaur Pankaj Tariyal (11DCP-001) (11DCP-003) (11DCP-007) (11DCP-008) (11DCP-010) (11DCP-038) (11DCP-044) (11DCP-048) (11DCP-081) (11IB-042)
PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
Table of Contents
1. BlackBerry Play-Book Product Specifications ................................................................................... 3 1.1 Hardware......................................................................................................................................... 3 1.2 Internals .......................................................................................................................................... 3 1.3 Connectivity .................................................................................................................................... 4 1.4 Battery life ....................................................................................................................................... 4 1.5 Software .......................................................................................................................................... 5 1.6 Operating system ............................................................................................................................ 5 1.7 Keyboard ......................................................................................................................................... 5 1.8 Browser ........................................................................................................................................... 6 1.9 Music ............................................................................................................................................... 6 1.10 Documents to Go suite ................................................................................................................. 6 1.11 Cameras ........................................................................................................................................ 7 1.12 What's missing? ............................................................................................................................ 7 1.13 Positioning..................................................................................................................................... 7 2. 3. Comparison of Different Tablets ....................................................................................................... 8 PESTEL Analysis ................................................................................................................................. 9 3.1 Political Factor................................................................................................................................. 9 3.2 Economic Factors ............................................................................................................................ 9 3.3 Social Factors .................................................................................................................................. 9 3.4 Technological Factor ..................................................................................................................... 10 3.5 Environmental Factors .................................................................................................................. 10 3.6 Legal Factors ................................................................................................................................. 10 4. Blackberry Play-Book - Five Forces Analysis ................................................................................... 12 4.1 Intensity of Existing Rivalry ........................................................................................................... 12
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4.2 Bargaining Power of Suppliers ...................................................................................................... 12 4.3 Threat of Substitutes..................................................................................................................... 12 4.4 Bargaining Power of Customers.................................................................................................... 12 4.5 Threat of New Competitors .......................................................................................................... 12 5. Play-Book – SWOT Analysis ............................................................................................................. 13 5.1 Strengths ....................................................................................................................................... 13 5.2 Weakness ...................................................................................................................................... 13 5.3 Opportunity................................................................................................................................... 13 5.4 Threat ............................................................................................................................................ 13 6. Customer Analysis ........................................................................................................................... 14 6.1 Who are the customers of Play-Book? ......................................................................................... 14 6.2 When do they buy? ....................................................................................................................... 14 6.3 Where customer buys? ................................................................................................................. 14 7. 8. Market Potential & Sales Forecasting ............................................................................................. 16 Product Analysis .............................................................................................................................. 19 8.1 Positives of the current Play-Book ................................................................................................ 19 8.2 Blackberry Play-Book Tablet Lacks the Right Moves .................................................................... 19 9. Play-Book Strategy .......................................................................................................................... 22 9.1 Growth Strategy ............................................................................................................................ 24 10. Pricing Trends.................................................................................................................................. 26 11. Promotion Strategy ......................................................................................................................... 27 12. Channels of Distribution ................................................................................................................. 29 12.1 Redington India ........................................................................................................................... 30 13. Bibliography .................................................................................................................................... 32
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1. BlackBerry Play-Book Product Specifications
The words "play" and "book" are a bit of an odd choice for RIM's latest attempt at consumer relevance, a tablet that, at its core, runs one of the most hardcore and industry-friendly operating systems known to man. The OS is QNX and the hardware is, of course, the BlackBerry Play-Book. It's an enterprisefriendly offering that's also out to conquer the consumer tablet ecosphere, hoping to follow in the footsteps of the BlackBerry handsets that have filled the pockets of corporate executives and BBM addicts.
1.1 Hardware
The black Play-Book, with its angular edges and dark styling, looks decidedly nondescript, more likely to open up a wormhole somewhere in orbit around Jupiter than leap into someone's hands at retail. Only the chrome logo 'round the back adds some flare, with the word "BlackBerry" subtly embossed below the display on the front. The chassis is cool metal, ever so slightly rubberized, the edges squared off, and there is absolutely no flex or give anywhere. It feels perfectly solid and doesn't yield to any attempted contortions, despite being just 0.4-inches thick -- less than a tenth thicker than an iPad 2. At 0.9 pounds, it's considerably lighter, but a bit heavier than the .83 pound Galaxy Tab.
1.2 Internals
Running the show is a dual-core, 1GHz TI OMAP processor that's expertly massaged and manipulated by the QNX OS here. QNX is a decidedly efficient and bulletproof operating system that powers everything from jet fighters to, well, little black tablets. That's backed by 1GB of RAM and 16, 32, or 64GB of storage, with the smallest costing $499 and each subsequent step adding $100 to the cost of entry. Graphics are handled by a PowerVR design, which quite handily offloads video decoding and gaming acceleration from the processor, enabling this thing to decode and display 1080p video over HDMI while still ticking along quite smoothly and running productivity apps on the seveninch display. Not a hint of dithering or pixilation, of course. Apps load quickly, tend to be impressively responsive, and switching from one to the next is effortless.
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1.3 Connectivity
There are various flavors of 4G coming down the pipe for the Play-Book later this year, including a WiMAX sampler for Sprint as well as HSPA+ and LTE for... well, for other carriers. That leaves us with 802.11a/b/g/n connectivity, plus Bluetooth of course. Using that last standard you can pair up a keyboard and mouse; do so and a microscopic cursor appears on the screen. Left clicks for taps and right-clicks for gestures are initiated at the edge of the screen rather than off of it.
1.4 Battery life
Compared to the competition, it delivers a solid mid-pack performance. We looped a standard MPEG4 video clip with Wi-Fi enabled and screen brightness at about 65 percent, managing seven hours and one minute before everything went dark. That's about an hour more than the Samsung Galaxy Tab, but over an hour less than the Motorola Xoom. The iPad 2, meanwhile, manages ten and a half hours when similarly stressed. Battery Life 7:01 10:26 9:33 8:20 3:26 7:20 6:09
RIM BlackBerry Play-Book Apple iPad 2 Apple iPad Motorola Xoom Dell Streak 7 Archos 101 Samsung Galaxy Tab
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1.5 Software
1.6 Operating system
To switch from one app to the next you can swipe inward from the left or the right, which pops the app out of full-screen and lets you move forward or back in the queue. A tap then maximizes your new favorite app. Or, a swipe up from the bottom gives you an even higher-level view of your running apps, which you can again zing your way through. Grabbing one and throwing it upward sends it to the garbage collector, or you can tap the tiny X that appears next to its name. Swiping from the top of the app brings down a context menu, extra controls that let you save files in Word to Go or jump from one album to another in the media player. Finally, swipe in from either top corner of the screen and you get a system context menu that displays the date and time, simple media controls, battery and connectivity indicators, and a little gear you can tap to tweak your system settings. Everything is quick and responsive -- just what you expect on a tablet that costs this much money.
1.7 Keyboard
At first blush, the keyboard on the Play-Book seems quite good. In landscape mode the keys are spread wide but still reachable by thumbs if you hold this tablet by its horizontal extents. Flipped into portrait it's an even easier reach, but obviously a bit more precision is required. However, spend a few minutes pecking away and things start to look rather direr. Neither numbers nor special keys are available without digging into the symbol menu -- even the exclamation point and the question have been driven to
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obscurity. This means if you want anything more exotic than a humble period or comma you're going to have to go find it. In fact, typing "you're" right there required hitting the symbol key to find the apostrophe -- there's no system-wide auto-correction here (it only works in some apps), no long-presses for alternate characters. What year is this, again?
1.8 Browser
RIM has provided a full Webkit browser for you to get your surf on, and it's a reasonably good one. Pages load quickly and naturally are rendered in full desktop mode, with all the pinch-tozoom goodness and snappy motion you'd expect. Flash Player 10.1 is on-board and works well. YouTube videos play perfectly fine and stutter-free when embedded within pages, though there is a dedicated YouTube app you can use if you like. Even Flash games like Bejeweled play well, important if you're still riding that particular horse. That's maybe 10 percent slower than the iPad 2 and Motorola Xoom manage, but still quite respectable.
1.9 Music
Open the music app and you have four big, handy buttons to choose from: artists, albums, genres, or all songs -the latter for users who can't be constrained by such arbitrary classifications. Albums are simply displayed in a giant grid; tap one to play it, while artists and individual songs go into a long list
1.10 Documents to Go suite
The Play-Book comes loaded with Word, Sheet, and Slideshow to Go from DataVis, giving you the ability to view PPT, DOC, and XLS files, even create the latter two right on the tablet. Viewing and editing documents is certainly easy enough and of course being able to do so makes for heightened productivity, but trying to enter Excel formulas using the on-screen keyboard will raise only your blood pressure.
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1.11 Cameras
Again, the Play-Book has three megapixels up front and five around the back, enabling 1080p MPEG4 video recording in a tablet and, we must say, doing a fair job of it. You're going to want a lot of light but, if things aren't too dim, video quality is quite good, as you can see in the sample clip above. Images, too, need a lot of light to keep the grain monster at bay, and the lack of a flash doesn't help in that department, but get the lighting right and the results are decent. Focus is sharp and images look bright. This is definitely a tablet that you could use to take some attractive photographs, if you can get over the social repercussions of waving this seven-inch viewfinder around on vacation.
1.12 What's missing?
Non-Bridge productivity apps (e-mail, calendar, etc.) are the biggest omission, but other things are missing too, like that awesome scrapbooking app from TAT that got us feeling all crafty. It's nowhere to be found. Also missing? The mysterious Android compatibility, support that is coming but sadly won't be working at launch. The ability to run Android apps could totally change the game -- or it could be a non-event. We won't know until RIM flips the switch and lets us all try it out. Overall, the selection in App World and on the device itself is rather limited at the moment. RIM is quick to point out that there are thousands of apps in the pipeline, written in some combination of Adobe AIR or HTML 5 or Java or within the Play-Book's native compilation engine. We're sure they're coming, but right now it's slim pickins.
1.13 positioning
Research In Motion positioned Play-Book tablet as mostly a WiFi device, walking a delicate line between touting the device‘s BlackBerry tethering as a feature and trying to appeal to those who own other smartphones. Positioned as a portable 'fits in your jacket' kind of a lifestyle tool that is set to make the lives of its users easier on the move. The BlackBerry Play-Book is positioned on the premise 'Work smarter. Play Harder'. The target group for the Play-Book will be young professionals, aged upwards of 23 years. "While positioning it solely as an entertainment device is a tempting thought in the tab category, BlackBerry has always been about reaching out to the 'consumer' that resides in a professional," says Baruah. Hence, even with the Play-Book, BlackBerry hopes to target a mix of the enterprising man and the consumer who wishes to be a pro at what he does.
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2. Comparison of Different Tablets
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3. PESTEL Analysis
3.1 Political Factor
The security features of Blackberry have been under scrutiny in countries like China, India, and UAE. These countries has been asking access to the data and being able to intercept any data being transferred through the Blackberry messenger. RIM faces pressure for the usage of toxic contents, energy usage and recycling issues from European countries like UK, Germany etc. which affect the hygiene and safety standards for manufactures. RIMs operations would be affected by these regulations by these countries.
3.2 Economic Factors
The economic factors would play an important role in the tablet market as demand is fairly elastic and fairly based on the consumers‘ income. The current market situation and the downturn of the global economy consumers are not willing to spend on a product unless the product offers promised values at an affordable price. The spending power of the middle income group of India is increasing however they are looking for more value for money products. The image of Blackberry smartphones have declined in the minds of the consumer so it would put a huge pressure on Blackberry to price their tablet in the proper range in order to be affordable and also maintain its profit margins. The investment sentiments in the business world today are not encouraging, though many companies are trying to attract the consumers to their products through various means of advertising, promotion.
3.3 Social Factors
The population of India is more aware of the various advanced technological products available throughout the world. The major focus of tablet market is the youth of India which is very well connected on the various social network sites and well informed of the various products. The mature Indian consumers' increasing preference for tablets and the younger demographics' desire to use mobile Web technologies could see the Tablet PC'S markets revenues soar. Multi usage, great user experience, rising of 3G penetration, enhanced reach and changing lifestyles of consumers in India will further boost the demand for tablet PCs in India. They also should have their distribution and service centers in order to provide customer support as tablet would require a more skilled customer support team other than smart phones.
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3.4 Technological Factor
Blackberry is already losing out in the smart phone market, and its brand value is decreasing among the smart phone users. The operating system and the available applications for Blackberry Play-Book would be major factor for its success. The competitors like Samsung, Apple have their presence in this market already and Blackberry would have to provide more technologically advanced and user friendly features for it to succeed over its competitors. The OS of the Apple tablets and the Android based tablets have already established themselves in the market. Blackberry would have to convince the consumers that the OS of Blackberry is better and user friendly than OS of Apple & Android based tablets. Amazon is also come up with new Kindle tablet which is already creating buzz in the tablet market and has emerged as an important competitor after the success of its previous Kindle tablets. The technology used by Amazon Blackberry would have to continuously provide more and more applications to their consumers to keep them engaged with their brand and they are more involved with Blackberry world. These apps should be vast range from gaming, educational, business and also supporting social networks.
3.5 Environmental Factors
There has been a continuous importance given by any organization towards the environmental issues. The business activities should not harm the environment in any way in the market or country you are doing the business. The recycling of tablet would be an issue which Blackberry has to take into account and it may have a proper process in place for the same which would give Blackberry a distinct advantage if it adopts any such process. It may get support of some NGOs which support such activities by any organization. The electronic agencies have been accused of using South- Asia along with Indian market as a dumping ground for their lower quality or used electronic products. The issue of e-waste would have to be taken into account by Blackberry giving it a distinct advantage.
3.6 Legal Factors
Blackberry is already facing issues in meeting the security concerns of some countries in order to track or keep a check on the data being transferred through e-mails. They need to meet the legal requirements of the host nations as to providing access to the encrypted data from their servers.
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The increase in usage of 3G services would increase in the demand for tablets and the organizations providing tablets & connections services would then have to mandatorily provide access to the government agencies.
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4. Blackberry Play-Book - Five Forces Analysis
4.1 Intensity of Existing Rivalry
? Large industry size ? Fast industry growth rate
4.2 Bargaining Power of Suppliers
? Large number of substitute inputs ? High competition among suppliers ? Low concentration of suppliers
4.3 Threat of Substitutes
? Substantial product differentiation ? High cost of switching to substitutes
4.4 Bargaining Power of Customers
? Large number of customers ? Buyers require special customization
4.5 Threat of New Competitors
? ? ? ? ? ? Strong distribution network required High capital requirements Customers are loyal to existing brands Strong brand names are important Advanced technologies are required Entry barriers are high
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5. Play-Book – SWOT Analysis
5.1 Strengths
? Provide industry-specific solutions to more than 10 industries. ? Strong brand equity in B2B, especially Enterprise market through strong CRM and extensive RIM‘s Blackberry‘s brand name synonymous with ?competence‘ – Reliable, Intelligent, Successful and ?Sophistication‘- upper-class charms (Dubois et. al, 2007). ? Play-Book‘s new operating system QNX promises users higher web-based performance (speed and efficiency), and has passed developers tests.
5.2 Weakness
? RIM‘s brands (traditionally) do not have a mass-appeal in consumer-market (pursued the niche-market, slow to respond to market trend) ? RIM (traditionally) did not have a foothold in consumer‘s e-applications (apps). There are more than 100,000 apps available for iPhone, 17,000 for Android devices 4,300 for the BlackBerry in 2010 Q1.
5.3 Opportunity
? Tablets market is growing exponentially, Gartner predicts a sales (by units) doubling yearby-year until 2014 with growth of 181% in 2011 compared to 19, 490 units in 2010 (Gartner, 2010). ? Mobile-service operators might shift their subsidy for users to tablets (Milanesi, 2010). ? Consumers want more infotainment on-the-go. E.g. in cafes and in the car ? Consumers are becoming more price-sensitive ? Market growth in service industry segment in B2B segment of tablets
5.4 Threat
? Institutional barriers in emerging markets Like China, India and the Arabs nations. E.g. requirement to allow government access to its customer‘s information will infringe on customers ?freedom-of-speech‘ (Thunderbird, 2008; Sagani, 2010). ? Market incumbent, Apple will release revised version soon after Play-Book‘s launch threatening Play-Books after-launch sales momentum ? Rising competitions in the tablet market by established ICT players: HP (B2B), Motorola (B2C), Samsung (B2C), and potential new comers like Sony and Sharp. ? Growth in Cloud Computing: customers whisked-way.
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6. Customer Analysis
6.1 Who are the customers of Play-Book?
The BlackBerry Play-Book is the perfect choice for two types of tablet buyers 1.) BlackBerry loyalists who want the perfect complement to their Smartphone, 2) People who want a tablet primarily for mobile Web browsing from the conference room, couch, bedroom, and other places where you don't have a full PC and don't want to whip out a laptop. The Play-Book is not for everyone. It is for the customers who want a tablet primarily for surfing the Web. It is an excellent larger screen companion for your BlackBerry and expands its strengths to include top-notch Web browsing and multimedia capabilities. It has users who buy just as a Web tablet. The JavaScript and Flash performance are excellent on the PlayBook -- in terms of Flash; the implementation is significantly smoother and more stable than the Android implementation of Flash. The Play-Book is the first mobile device that provides something close to the full desktop Web experience.
6.2 When do they buy?
Users of Play-Book are people who spend lot of time in surfing like business executives, online companies, and sales manager sometimes upper middle class students who use it for e books and watching movies because of its large screen size. Therefore Customer buys this product when company is planning to give phones to its sales manager as additional benefits.
6.3 Where customer buys?
It is usually purchased by companies in bulk quantity and it is directly through company. Descriptive Variables Segmentation Variable for Consumer market of Blackberry Play-Book Variable – Geographic Region City size Density Typical Breakdown Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities Population greater than 4 million Urban
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Variable – Demographic
Age
Gender Family life cycle Income Occupation Education Religion Race Nationality Variable – Psychographic Social Class Lifestyle Personality Variable – Behavioral Occasions Benefits User status Usage rate Loyalty Status Attitude towards product
Typical Breakdown 25-50 (Business executive),They have mainly targeted business executives, along with that they have targeted normal consumers like young children of upper middle class who spends lot of hours in surfing and reading e books or that sort of activities Male & Female Young single person, Married business executives Greater than 12 lakhs Business executives, Sales Manager, Students, Online companies People who have knowledge of Internet and it can be students who are pursuing graduation All All All Typical Breakdown Middle class, Upper middle class, Upper class Occupation based Ambitious Typical Breakdown Regular Secured email, catalog of your organization's required and optional work apps Regular user Heavy High In beginning it was positive which later began to negative
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7. Market Potential & Sales Forecasting
The user experience is simple and self-evident, with no buttons and two basic gestures -- swipeup and swipe-down. It's as easy to use as the one-button iPad solution, but without just blatantly ripping off Apple. The other big innovation in the Play-Book is the Web browser. The page-load times are really quick, the fonts render beautifully, and RIM and Adobe worked together to pull off a Flash experience that virtually seamless. For example, once can take a lot of high quality Flash videos on Web page and throw into full screen mode and they look great and render flawlessly. You can even output these high quality videos to an HD TV via the Play-Book's HDMI port and they still look great. It has features which make it unique in its category: a. UI and performance - The user experience is the biggest surprise of the Play-Book. It is easy to learn, smooth to navigate, and has some of the best and fastest responsiveness that you'll find on any Smartphone or tablet. It is a completely different experience than a BlackBerry Smartphone. b. Full-featured Web browsing - As we've already talked about, the Web browsing experience on the Play-Book is excellent. The Flash implementation is well-done. Even though I'm not a fan of Flash, it's still a big part of the Web and will be for years, until HTML5 replaces it. Oh, and the Play-Book already handles HTML5 quite nicely. c. Usable word processor - One my biggest complaints with the iPad is that there isn't a decent word processing app for taking notes, writing letters/memos, building basic documents, etc. Apple's Pages app is a little too complicated than it needs to be and apps like iA Writer are nice but almost a little too bare bones. The Play-Book has the happy medium. Its Word To Go app (see screenshot) is the best word processing app I've used on a tablet. It is dead simple to use and has the most important basic features for building a good document. Plus, it's free and installed by default. This is where RIM's acquisition of Davaviz -- the company behind Documents to Go -- has really helped. d. Brilliant for multimedia - The graphics performance and LCD display on the Play-Book are another big plus -- and another pleasant surprise since the BlackBerry isn't known as a multimedia powerhouse (although its high-end phones have been making strides in recent years). The Play-Book is terrific for watching videos and looking at photos. The images are crisp, the colors are vibrant, and the performance is snappy. Market Potential can be improved by a. Email and Calendar - The thing you most often hear the Play-Book getting dinged for is the fact that it didn't ship with native email, calendar, and contacts apps (RIM says it will
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add them later this year). What the Play-Book does offer is the ability to use its Bridge feature to connect to a BlackBerry Smartphone and then use its email, calendar, and contacts on the Play-Book's larger screen. However, the actual data never resides on the Play-Book. It remains locked down in the BlackBerry phone, which is a plus for users that need tight security. The other thing to keep in mind is that if you use Web mail such as Gmail or Yahoo Mail, the Web experience on the Play-Book is good enough to handle light email and calendar tasks. b. Needs more Apps - The biggest problem with the BlackBerry Play-Book when you compare it to the iPad is the lack of apps. On the iPad, apps extend the functionality of the device in lots of different ways, for business, for personal productivity, for entertainment, and much more. While RIM claims that the Play-Book ships with 3,000 tablet-optimized apps -- "more than any of our competitors at launch," according to coCEO Mike Lazard‘s -- the problem is that the iPad has 75,000 apps now and a lot of important partners who are committed to the platform. RIM will never be able to compete with that, but if it can forge partnerships to get key apps like Amazon Kindle, Ever note, Drop box, and Netflix on to the Play-Book, then it would have a much easier time winning over a larger niche market. However, companies appear reticent to jump on the Play-Book bandwagon. Amazon initially announced that it would release a Kindle app for the Play-Book launch, but is dragging its feet in fulfilling that promise. c. 7-inch form factor has its limits - The thing that limits the great Web and multimedia experience on the Play-Book is the 7-inch screen. There are times when it's just a little too small to clearly read Web pages and when some of the details can get lost in videos due to the smaller screen. Declining Sales The sales have been declining for Play-Book ever since its launch in October 2010. Various sources have put the sales figure on launch day alone at approximately 50,000, exceeding the expectations. RIM announced in its quarterly earnings that half a million Play-Book tablets were shipped in the first quarter. However, after a lukewarm market reception, there were reports that the company revised its second-quarter estimates from 2.4 million down to 800,000 – 900,000 units. And When RIM announced their second quarter financial results; they revealed that they shipped 200,000 units. The combined unit shipment of 700,000 units during the first two quarter of release was only a small fraction of the 2-3 million units per quarter many had anticipated before the device's introduction. Following several months of poor sales RIM started discounting the price of Play-Book from its original $499 retail price to $300 at many outlets in late September 2011. The price was further reduced all over the world at various retail outlets in November due to apparent low market demand. RIM reduced the price of Play-Book by over 50 percent in India under a limited festive season offer till December 31, 2011. Buoyed by the huge response, the company had decided to extend the offer by a week. The 16 GB model of the Play17 | P a g e
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Book can be bought for Rs. 13,490 in the Indian market instead of its regular price of 27,990. While the 32 GB model is available for 15,990, the 64 GB model is being offered for 19,990 against their regular prices of 32,990 and 37,990 respectively. In December 2011, RIM announced that it had sold more than 150,000 Play-Books in the third fiscal quarter, compare to 200,000 shipments in the second quarter and 500,000 shipments in the first quarter. In total, RIM shipped to reseller channels 800,000 Play-Book tablets in the first 9 months of fiscal year 2012 (ending Nov 2011). Due to low demand for the Play-Book, RIM took a $485 million write-off to account for offering price discounts. In May 2012, Bloomberg claimed that RIM's Play-Book inventory has increased by two-thirds due to lack of demand for the tablet device. However, the Play-Book is a relatively popular tablet in Canada, accounting for nearly 20% of the tablet market in Research In Motion's home country in a report released on July 2012. As of March 2012, RIM has announced that it has sold one million Play-Books since its launch. On June 28th, 2012, RIM announced that it had shipped an additional 260,000 Play-Books and announced on the corresponding earnings calls that sell-through to customers was higher than this number. So, we can forecast the Play-Book demand to decrease or stay constant over the time until RIM decides to spur the marketing efforts along with new launches of Play-Book variants.
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8. Product Analysis
8.1 Positives of the current Play-Book
In the absence of a Home button, there‘s a new UI convention to learn. One can touch the frame along the bottom of the screen and swipe up when you want to return to the home screen. Touch sensitivity is very responsive, and the swipe controls work great. Taking a note from Palm‘s web OS, RIM brings multitasking to its QNX-based BlackBerry Tablet OS, letting customers switch back and forth between simultaneously running applications. By swiping a finger to the side of the screen, one can jump from the YouTube video back to a paused game of Tetris, without having to return to the home screen. Also cool: the ability to multitask with apps running on a peripheral display. When the Play-Book is hooked up to an HDTV, you can watch video at 1080p on the big screen while browsing the web on the PlayBook. Or, you can show a presentation on a projector while swiping through your speaking notes on the tablet. Any tablet debuting more than a year after the Apple‘s market-dominating iPad needs an edge. For the Play-Book, that edge is support for Adobe Flash, a feature that the iPad is famously lacking. RIM says it took over two years of working with Adobe to bring Flash to its tablet. RIM delivered several software updates during tests, showing that the company is still ironing out bugs. Flash stability increased with each update, and may well be even more stable. There is a learning curve to finding your way around the Play-Book. Unlike iOS or Android, there's no home button to act as an anchor for the experience. Instead, there's a basic vocabulary of gestures you'll need to learn, such as swiping upward from beneath the screen to access apps, swiping down from the top bezel to access menus, or swiping from either the left or right bezel to bounce between open applications. It's a bit of a secret handshake to get it all down, but once you do, you can move swiftly, and the speed with which you can jump between running apps is noticeably faster than anything else out there. It's a dream tablet for anyone with attention deficit disorder. Like switching between applications on your computer, the Play-Book keeps your open apps running in parallel at full throttle and takes no time jumping right in.
8.2 Blackberry Play-Book Tablet Lacks the Right Moves
The BlackBerry Play-Book tablet is a good-looking piece of hardware. Like the proto-humans in 2001: A Space Odyssey, you‘ll be eager to touch the monolithic object‘s black, button-less visage. But once you do, things get a little more complicated. The Play-Book‘s design exudes the same sense of finely honed ?business chic? that Research in Motion has perfected in its BlackBerry Smartphone. But the Play-Book‘s software suffers from several missteps and oversights, especially in the drought of useful apps — the very things that
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have made tablet such a hit — and the lacklustre performance of Adobe‘s Flash player. The major drawback was the drought of useful applications. BlackBerry‘s competitors Apple and Samsung are having hundreds of thousands of applications with compared to blackberry having very less in number. At a svelte 7.6 inches by 5.1 inches, the Play-Book is about the size of Samsung‘s Galaxy Tab, and considerably smaller than the Motorola Xoom and Apple iPad 2. That may prove bothersome if you prefer watching videos and gaming on a larger screen. Gamers preferred Apple and Samsung tablets than the Blackberry tablet. But in a trade-off for the small screen size, the Play-Book makes gains in portability. At just under a pound, long reading sessions don‘t cause as much fatigue as they do with larger tablets, and the rubberized backing adds a pleasing tooth to the grip. One won‘t be worried about dropping it on the floor of the bus. One of the first things you'll notice about the Play-Book is the complete lack of buttons on the front. Play-Book's navigation is handled using onscreen controls. It is not all gravy, though. The top edge of the Play-Book is a case study in bad design. The problem is the power/wake button, which is so small and recessed that you'll need to whittle down your fingertip to use it. When placed within the extra layer of a case, the power button was almost impossible to press. It's a problem, and one you'll encounter every day since the button is the only means to wake the screen from sleep. The nimble fingered among us may be able to look past it, but for many it will be a deal breaker that ranks up there with BlackBerry thumb. Dedicated buttons for volume and play/pause are also located on the top, but their only real crime is redundancy. Aside from being buttery smooth and a multitasking dynamo, the Play-Book's OS is a dramatic change from the cramped, trackball-focused OS RIM built its name on. It bears more than a passing resemblance to Palm's resurrected Web OS, but arguably surpasses it in its quest for laptop like performance. RIM is banking that those who bemoan the loss of screen real estate will use the tablet as a media hub for larger devices. One can drag and drop media files from your desktop to the PlayBook the same way you‘d move files to a USB flash drive. One can also transfer files wirelessly over your local network. But the fact that a marquee feature is strapped with such stability problems so close to the ship date was troubling the brand. Another glaring flaw is the Play-Book‘s complete lack of native e-mail, contacts and calendar apps. BlackBerry Smartphone owners can access e-mail on the Play-Book after installing RIM‘s Bridge app, which connects the phone to the tablet by Bluetooth, but was difficult to test this feature.
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Also worth considering is the relatively paltry selection on BlackBerry‘s App World, which contains roughly 3,000 apps. By comparison, Apple and Google‘s app inventories number in the hundreds of thousands. And some of the biggest apps — Facebook, a Gmail client, Twitter, Angry Birds — are conspicuously absent. With growing number of people getting addicted to games like Angry Birds, the absence of it does affect its sales. Clicking on the Facebook ?app? icon on the desktop brings up a web browser and loads the Facebook website. RIM has announced that an Android app player will be available on the Play-Book. This is another drawback. The android App Play-Book should bolster the number of available applications, but any Android apps ported to the Play-Book must be vetted by RIM before they can make it into the store. Under casual use conditions, the Play-Book‘s battery held up for close to eight hours, which is on par with both generations of the iPad. With heavy use of Flash-based sites (when they functioned) and 1080p video-watching, the Play-Book‘s battery hung in there for an impressive 5½ hours. It‘s important to note that this is a Wi-Fi only version of the Play-Book, and that the battery life may be different once RIM releases the promised 4G versions of the Play-Book for the big three U.S. carriers. RIM‘s Web-Kit-based browser is about as stable as your bipolar uncle. No native e-mail, calendar or contacts apps. App ecosystem is lacking. You‘ll need to install a driver before you can connect it to your PC or Mac. Runs Flash, sorta. BlackBerry‘s existing Play-Book has a number of drawbacks. The brand BlackBerry should come up with a new Play-Book product which should have all the features which the current Play-Book is lacking. Focus should be more on applications which are the backbone of its competitors namely Apple and Samsung. People could easily download number of applications for free or at a very low cost, which is still not in the case for BlackBerry. Blackberry‘s Play-Book tablet was one of the most fancied launches of 2011. For all the hype surrounding this launch, the ?Play-Book‘ ended up being one of the disappointments of the year 2011. In fact, it was thought of to be the game changer for the falling brand value of Research-inMotion‘s Blackberry services, but it ended up being another setback. Analysts are however of the opinion that the Play-Book could translate into a match-winner for the RIM if it was to take steps to remove the shortcomings that are inherent in the product capability and feature sets.
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9. Play-Book Strategy
Blackberry Play-Book has lost the battle in order to win over the competitor‘s customers. There were many reasons behind the failure of the Play-Book right from the technology to positioning to name every aspect of the product was seen to be of less value by the target consumers. The strategy to connect Blackberry mobile as a complimentary product to the Play-Book proved to be a disaster for Play-Book. Blackberry is majorly known for its mailing and messaging services. Blackberry Play-Book should have proved a product of great importance for the target group of Blackberry if the product would have offered some basic features. The product lost the battle in a motive to create a Point of Difference but failed in the strategy to develop Point of Parity with a difference. The end consumer found that the product is not having the Point of Parity with other Tablets available in the market and the product had the augmented features but lacked generic features such as – i. No Mobile Connectivity – The biggest issue with the Play-Book was a lack of its ability to work on GSM or CDMA signals. In other words, the tablet would only work on a wifi connection. Although this could well serve the needs of business professionals that needed a more compact method to be in touch with the corporate peers over a wifi network, a missing mobile link meant that the tablet could not be used to support the mobile workforce. As a result, the functionality of the tablet was severely retarded. Inherent Issues in Emailing – Considering the business background of the RIM‘s earlier products, it was clear that aspirations of the business users were clearly on ensuring flawless continuity and receipt of business emails. With the Play-Book, the users required a handset to be plugged with the tablet for accessing the messaging applications. While the messaging worked, it was clear that the functionality did not afford the simplicity that is sought by an end-user. Proprietary Operating System – Another drawback of the Play-Book was the operating system on which it runs; the QNX operating system is a close ended architecture that is proprietary to the RIM. This essentially means that the operating system functionality cannot be extended, and the impact is there to see in terms of a poor number and volume of apps for the RIM‘s Play-Book tablet. While, we do not really expect RIM to alter the QNX in anyway, we need to see if the company will lay special emphasis to promote the application development with a view to improve the apps density for the Play-Book owners.
ii.
iii.
The Play-Book tried to win over the competition by leveraging on the brand value of Blackberry but the technical flaw no. 2 (mentioned above) did not supported the objective as in order to
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enjoy the features of the tablet up to the optimal level one need to have a handset which will be plugged with the tablet to access the messaging application. RIM‘s BlackBerry OS falls short in every way. The operating system‘s design is sub-par, the built-in applications are hardly useful and the virtual keyboard is a disappointment. Although hardware design matters, the way in which an operating system functions is far more important. And unfortunately for RIM, its operating system just doesn‘t hold up to iOS. Play-Book also bared the heat of the change in overall brand positioning which also failed hence diluting the trust on the brand Blackberry. To summarize, Blackberry Play-Book should focus more on the following lines ? Design - The top edge of the Play-Book is a case study in bad design. ? Software – Play-Book‘s software suffers from several missteps and oversights, especially in the drought of useful apps — the very things that have made tablet such a hit. ? Useful Applications ? Power/Wake button – It is difficult to push the wake button, need to improve. ? Email - Inherent Issues in Emailing ? Games – Angry Birds which Blackberry doesn‘t support is one of the most proffered games currently ? App Ecosystem – The BlackBerry Play-Book App ecosystem is lacking. You‘ll need to install a driver before you can connect it to your PC or Mac. Runs Flash, sorta. One of the major reasons for the failure of the product was also its name Blackberry positioned itself as a corporate phone and in order to change the positioning of the whole brand as a cool brand the name was given as Play-Book but no one checked that the association of the brand was still as a corporate phone. The name doesn't suits its identity just think that the CEO tells in a AGM ", ?Wait guys, I will get my Play-Book to show the latest revenue!? Play-Book? In order to establish the product in the market RIM needs to keep in mind some of the issues which needs to be solved
a. It needs to clearly define its objectives b. Select the correct Target group c. Choose the competitor’s Target group d. A definite positioning for Blackberry Brand
Objectives – As Play-Book has continuously lost its market since its launch. Blackberry should not aim to win the competition in the market but to stabilize the product in the market and develop Brand association. Blackberry has lost the trust of its target group so it needs to gain it back not Play-Book as a product but Blackberry as a brand.
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Target Group – With the recent campaign ?Action starts here? Blackberry has now tried to target all the people who are in action and has broaden their target group from focusing just on the corporate.
9.1 Growth Strategy
Growth in Share Strategy
Market Development
Market Peneteration
New Segment
Convert New Users
Existing Customers
Competitors Customers
Targeting the competitor‘s customers can be a death game for Play-Book. As Play-Book is no match with ipad Blackberry cannot win the competition until they develop the product up-to parity, design differentiation factors and rebuild the brand associations. At this point of time Blackberry can go for targeting the customers from New segment (which they have broadened), and/or Covert New Users and focus on existing customers. 9.1.1 Strategy 1 – RIM needs to realize that the product needs to fit its target audience. Play-Book will be no one‘s child if tries to please each and every one. So in order to reposition Play-Book it can be relaunched with the name ?BOOK? with OS10 which is the latest OS by Blackberry and adding all the missing technical features mentioned above. The ?BOOK? will be a much higher version of Play-Book which will be independent and will not need any supporting mobile device. Also OS10 which supports other external application will bring the tab at par with other products in the market also changing the name will have a higher impact on the target audience. The OS 10 Book will also have the Blackberry messenger facility like the phones and will deliver every application which is important for the professionals. The Blackberry messenger of OS10 is expected to have the audio and video calling facilities this will act as a point of differentiation for the Blackberry Tab in the market. This product will be priced at par or above with other tabs in the market and unlike Play-Book whose prices have been now brought down to about $185. This
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product will slowly cannibalize the current Play-Book which is not able to gain trust from the customers and also has a bad reputation. 9.1.2 Strategy 2 Blackberry has now come up with the campaign ?Action starts here? and has diversified its target audience; the whole brand is on a shift and is repositioning itself. Blackberry can position Play-Book as an entry level product in the tab world by focusing on the target audience which is moving towards professionalism e.g. students from Std. 8th – 12th, graduate school students. While for the senior level they can launch ?BOOK? with OS 10 as mentioned above.
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10.
Pricing Trends
In an interview, Sunil Lalvani, Director Enterprise Sales, Research In Motion, India said ?We have seen positive momentum with the promotional pricing levels and have decided to maintain an aggressive pricing strategy in order to help continue the momentum. We believe this attractive pricing combined with the compelling features in Play-Book OS 2.0 and locally relevant applications make this offering extremely competitive.” The slash in the prices of Blackberry Play-Book was not entirely a strategic move of RIM but rather a consequence of the poor worldwide sale of Play-Book. At the time of its launch in April, some analysts expected RIM could sell as many as six million Play-Books in the device‘s first year on the market. However, RIM has sold fewer than a million units, and now has a stockpile of inventory. At the end of last year, Research In Motion (RIM) had slashed prices for its Play-Book, which came down to Rs 24,490 for the 64GB version from its launch price Rs 37,990. The prices have gone down further by approximately Rs 19,990. On the other hand, the 16GB version is available at only Rs 13,990. A gradual decline in prices is inevitable for consumer electronics makers. But the recent downward pressure on tablet pricing also reflects a broader volatility in the market that has been turned upside down by the arrival of cheaper, snazzier models. Play-Book faces direct competition at the hands of Apple iPad and Galaxy Pad where both of them have outdone PlayBook in the terms of market share comprehensively and both have proved to have significantly better value proposition compared to the Play-Book. The current price strategy of Play-Book is in line with the market scenario prevailing in the tablet market. However, the need of the hour for Play-Book is to come up with an attractive Product and Promotion strategy to get the costumer‘s attention and reposition itself to come out of the otherwise dismal performance of Blackberry Play-Book.
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11.
Promotion Strategy
As we have already seen, Blackberry has failed owing to the above mentioned results. Now in order to promote the 2 new products (1 alternative in each strategy) as mentioned below, the following strategies can be used – i) In order to promote the new blackberry ?BOOK? having the added features, the proper promotion should be carried out. Blackberry Play-Book had failed due to the limited compatibility issues of various apps and soft-wares. The new blackberry book which is now having no compatibility issues will need to emphasize upon this aspect for promotion. People will have to be made aware about the added features. People resonate with blackberry as the product having a lot of complexities and a product meant for the corporates. They need to be made aware of the improvements and advances in the product. Hence the pre-launch, launch and post-launch promotions need to be scaled up greatly. Blackberry should come out with advertisements mentioning the advantages of blackberry book over blackberry Play-Book, thus enabling the users to understand the difference between the 2. Admitting the mistake and correcting it increases the visibility of the product. This would help blackberry to reduce the sales of its Play-Book and increase the same of its new blackberry book. This ultimately would lead to the cannibalization of blackberry Play-Book by blackberry book. The launch of the product should be a mega-event involving some of the eminent personalities representing the target-user group. The pre-launch promotion forms an integral part of a product‘s success. Various pre-launch promotion techniques such as story-building around the product and its apps, social media marketing, etc. should be used. The 2nd strategy suggested is to change the target audience for the blackberry Play-Book and make the new audience as the students between the age group of 10 and 20 along with increasing the focused group related apps and games. This strategy also aims at a re-launch of a new blackberry Play-Book for the presently targeted segment i.e. the people above the age group of 20. The new blackberry Play-Book would again contain advanced features suited to the needs of the targeted audience. Here too, the role of promotion techniques is an essential one. We propose to use experiential promotions for the new Play-Book. The new Play-Book can be made available for use at luxury resorts, flights, etc. where the people intend to have something for passing the time rather than getting bored. Such proper placing of the product for
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promotion would help users get acquainted with the interface and develop an understanding of the same. And then as is said, ?One who uses blackberry once, uses it forever?, the saying will hold true. The new features of the product will intrigue the user to buy it and hence help increase the sales. Such other forms of marketing as using in the board room discussions, grand events would also help increase the visibility of the product thereby ultimately leading to the increased sales. Thus using each of these strategies, blackberry would aim at bridging the gap between the need of the customers and the need-fulfillment by the company.
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12.
Channels of Distribution
RIM is always eager to partner with other companies to develop and sell products and services that give BlackBerry smart phone users added performance and functionality. Through RIM‘s Partner programs, such as the BlackBerry Alliance Program, partners get the tools, support and endorsement from RIM to help develop their robust and innovative solutions for BlackBerry smart phones and wireless solutions. RIM Partners are given limited permission to use the RIM Trademarks and Logos, thereby increasing visibility among BlackBerry tablets users and wireless carriers and depth in their customer base. Generally, RIM will partner with companies and license the right to use certain RIM Trademarks and Logos to companies that have established distribution channels and high customer satisfaction with a proven product/service which adds performance and functionality to the BlackBerry® tablets experience. Research In Motion (RIM) (Nasdaq: RIMM; TSX RIM) announced a collaboration with Redington India to establish national retail distribution channels for BlackBerry tablets. This strategic business initiative will help RIM more effectively tap the fast growing mobile communications market in India. The Play-Book is being distributed nationally through Redington India and Ingram Micro, initially in 1,000 retail stores across eight cities, the company said in a statement. As part of the retail distribution agreement with Redington India, BlackBerry tablets and service plans from supported carriers will initially be available in retail and modern trade outlets across nine cities: Mumbai, Delhi, NCR, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Pune and Ahmedabad. Redington intends to expand the retail footprint in a phased manner and will offer a wide range of BlackBerry products beginning with the BlackBerry Pearl series, the BlackBerry Curve series and the BlackBerry Bold tablets. Commenting on the partnership Mr. Rajesh Khetarpal, Head-Digital Life Style & Telecom SBU, Redington India said: ?Redington has always believed in forging relationships that deliver value to end customers. Through this collaboration, Research In Motion will leverage our professional services and pan-India reach to increase the availability of BlackBerry tablets across the country.? Ms. Frenny Bawa, Vice President, India, Research In Motion said on the partnership: ?This is an exciting phase of growth for Research In Motion and its partners in India and we are delighted to be working with Redington. This collaboration with Redington, together with our strong carrier partnerships and industry leading products and services, will further strengthen our market position and presence in India.?
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12.1 Redington India
Redington (India) Ltd is in the business of supply chain management (end-to-end). It has its operations in South Asia, Middle East and Africa. Redington has market presence in more than 18 countries. Its cliental includes information technology, telecom, lifestyle and consumer electronics products, worldwide. Redington India Ltd has successfully positioned itself as a focused distribution player with a significant reach across India, Middle East and Africa. Our Mission is to provide the best value proposition to our vendors and reseller partners through innovation and responsiveness and be the partner of choice for them.
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12.1.1 Business Model of Redington
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13.
Bibliography
a. http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/13/blackberry-Play-Book-review/ b. http://zapp5.staticworld.net/news/graphics/206392-206392-tablet_wars_chart_original2_original.jpg c. http://cashmereandsilk.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/Play-Book-part-two-swot-tows-nokidding/
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doc_197712441.docx
The report details about Blackberry Playbook from the perspective of Product Management and how could the company have avoided the failure.
BLACKBERRY PLAY-BOOK
A Product Insight
Submitted by
Abel Alexander Adil Anwar Amitava Manna Amritanshu Mehra Ankit Sharma Ravi Gupta Shobhit Uttreja Taranpreet Singh Mayank Gaur Pankaj Tariyal (11DCP-001) (11DCP-003) (11DCP-007) (11DCP-008) (11DCP-010) (11DCP-038) (11DCP-044) (11DCP-048) (11DCP-081) (11IB-042)
PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
Table of Contents
1. BlackBerry Play-Book Product Specifications ................................................................................... 3 1.1 Hardware......................................................................................................................................... 3 1.2 Internals .......................................................................................................................................... 3 1.3 Connectivity .................................................................................................................................... 4 1.4 Battery life ....................................................................................................................................... 4 1.5 Software .......................................................................................................................................... 5 1.6 Operating system ............................................................................................................................ 5 1.7 Keyboard ......................................................................................................................................... 5 1.8 Browser ........................................................................................................................................... 6 1.9 Music ............................................................................................................................................... 6 1.10 Documents to Go suite ................................................................................................................. 6 1.11 Cameras ........................................................................................................................................ 7 1.12 What's missing? ............................................................................................................................ 7 1.13 Positioning..................................................................................................................................... 7 2. 3. Comparison of Different Tablets ....................................................................................................... 8 PESTEL Analysis ................................................................................................................................. 9 3.1 Political Factor................................................................................................................................. 9 3.2 Economic Factors ............................................................................................................................ 9 3.3 Social Factors .................................................................................................................................. 9 3.4 Technological Factor ..................................................................................................................... 10 3.5 Environmental Factors .................................................................................................................. 10 3.6 Legal Factors ................................................................................................................................. 10 4. Blackberry Play-Book - Five Forces Analysis ................................................................................... 12 4.1 Intensity of Existing Rivalry ........................................................................................................... 12
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4.2 Bargaining Power of Suppliers ...................................................................................................... 12 4.3 Threat of Substitutes..................................................................................................................... 12 4.4 Bargaining Power of Customers.................................................................................................... 12 4.5 Threat of New Competitors .......................................................................................................... 12 5. Play-Book – SWOT Analysis ............................................................................................................. 13 5.1 Strengths ....................................................................................................................................... 13 5.2 Weakness ...................................................................................................................................... 13 5.3 Opportunity................................................................................................................................... 13 5.4 Threat ............................................................................................................................................ 13 6. Customer Analysis ........................................................................................................................... 14 6.1 Who are the customers of Play-Book? ......................................................................................... 14 6.2 When do they buy? ....................................................................................................................... 14 6.3 Where customer buys? ................................................................................................................. 14 7. 8. Market Potential & Sales Forecasting ............................................................................................. 16 Product Analysis .............................................................................................................................. 19 8.1 Positives of the current Play-Book ................................................................................................ 19 8.2 Blackberry Play-Book Tablet Lacks the Right Moves .................................................................... 19 9. Play-Book Strategy .......................................................................................................................... 22 9.1 Growth Strategy ............................................................................................................................ 24 10. Pricing Trends.................................................................................................................................. 26 11. Promotion Strategy ......................................................................................................................... 27 12. Channels of Distribution ................................................................................................................. 29 12.1 Redington India ........................................................................................................................... 30 13. Bibliography .................................................................................................................................... 32
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1. BlackBerry Play-Book Product Specifications
The words "play" and "book" are a bit of an odd choice for RIM's latest attempt at consumer relevance, a tablet that, at its core, runs one of the most hardcore and industry-friendly operating systems known to man. The OS is QNX and the hardware is, of course, the BlackBerry Play-Book. It's an enterprisefriendly offering that's also out to conquer the consumer tablet ecosphere, hoping to follow in the footsteps of the BlackBerry handsets that have filled the pockets of corporate executives and BBM addicts.
1.1 Hardware
The black Play-Book, with its angular edges and dark styling, looks decidedly nondescript, more likely to open up a wormhole somewhere in orbit around Jupiter than leap into someone's hands at retail. Only the chrome logo 'round the back adds some flare, with the word "BlackBerry" subtly embossed below the display on the front. The chassis is cool metal, ever so slightly rubberized, the edges squared off, and there is absolutely no flex or give anywhere. It feels perfectly solid and doesn't yield to any attempted contortions, despite being just 0.4-inches thick -- less than a tenth thicker than an iPad 2. At 0.9 pounds, it's considerably lighter, but a bit heavier than the .83 pound Galaxy Tab.
1.2 Internals
Running the show is a dual-core, 1GHz TI OMAP processor that's expertly massaged and manipulated by the QNX OS here. QNX is a decidedly efficient and bulletproof operating system that powers everything from jet fighters to, well, little black tablets. That's backed by 1GB of RAM and 16, 32, or 64GB of storage, with the smallest costing $499 and each subsequent step adding $100 to the cost of entry. Graphics are handled by a PowerVR design, which quite handily offloads video decoding and gaming acceleration from the processor, enabling this thing to decode and display 1080p video over HDMI while still ticking along quite smoothly and running productivity apps on the seveninch display. Not a hint of dithering or pixilation, of course. Apps load quickly, tend to be impressively responsive, and switching from one to the next is effortless.
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1.3 Connectivity
There are various flavors of 4G coming down the pipe for the Play-Book later this year, including a WiMAX sampler for Sprint as well as HSPA+ and LTE for... well, for other carriers. That leaves us with 802.11a/b/g/n connectivity, plus Bluetooth of course. Using that last standard you can pair up a keyboard and mouse; do so and a microscopic cursor appears on the screen. Left clicks for taps and right-clicks for gestures are initiated at the edge of the screen rather than off of it.
1.4 Battery life
Compared to the competition, it delivers a solid mid-pack performance. We looped a standard MPEG4 video clip with Wi-Fi enabled and screen brightness at about 65 percent, managing seven hours and one minute before everything went dark. That's about an hour more than the Samsung Galaxy Tab, but over an hour less than the Motorola Xoom. The iPad 2, meanwhile, manages ten and a half hours when similarly stressed. Battery Life 7:01 10:26 9:33 8:20 3:26 7:20 6:09
RIM BlackBerry Play-Book Apple iPad 2 Apple iPad Motorola Xoom Dell Streak 7 Archos 101 Samsung Galaxy Tab
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1.5 Software
1.6 Operating system
To switch from one app to the next you can swipe inward from the left or the right, which pops the app out of full-screen and lets you move forward or back in the queue. A tap then maximizes your new favorite app. Or, a swipe up from the bottom gives you an even higher-level view of your running apps, which you can again zing your way through. Grabbing one and throwing it upward sends it to the garbage collector, or you can tap the tiny X that appears next to its name. Swiping from the top of the app brings down a context menu, extra controls that let you save files in Word to Go or jump from one album to another in the media player. Finally, swipe in from either top corner of the screen and you get a system context menu that displays the date and time, simple media controls, battery and connectivity indicators, and a little gear you can tap to tweak your system settings. Everything is quick and responsive -- just what you expect on a tablet that costs this much money.
1.7 Keyboard
At first blush, the keyboard on the Play-Book seems quite good. In landscape mode the keys are spread wide but still reachable by thumbs if you hold this tablet by its horizontal extents. Flipped into portrait it's an even easier reach, but obviously a bit more precision is required. However, spend a few minutes pecking away and things start to look rather direr. Neither numbers nor special keys are available without digging into the symbol menu -- even the exclamation point and the question have been driven to
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obscurity. This means if you want anything more exotic than a humble period or comma you're going to have to go find it. In fact, typing "you're" right there required hitting the symbol key to find the apostrophe -- there's no system-wide auto-correction here (it only works in some apps), no long-presses for alternate characters. What year is this, again?
1.8 Browser
RIM has provided a full Webkit browser for you to get your surf on, and it's a reasonably good one. Pages load quickly and naturally are rendered in full desktop mode, with all the pinch-tozoom goodness and snappy motion you'd expect. Flash Player 10.1 is on-board and works well. YouTube videos play perfectly fine and stutter-free when embedded within pages, though there is a dedicated YouTube app you can use if you like. Even Flash games like Bejeweled play well, important if you're still riding that particular horse. That's maybe 10 percent slower than the iPad 2 and Motorola Xoom manage, but still quite respectable.
1.9 Music
Open the music app and you have four big, handy buttons to choose from: artists, albums, genres, or all songs -the latter for users who can't be constrained by such arbitrary classifications. Albums are simply displayed in a giant grid; tap one to play it, while artists and individual songs go into a long list
1.10 Documents to Go suite
The Play-Book comes loaded with Word, Sheet, and Slideshow to Go from DataVis, giving you the ability to view PPT, DOC, and XLS files, even create the latter two right on the tablet. Viewing and editing documents is certainly easy enough and of course being able to do so makes for heightened productivity, but trying to enter Excel formulas using the on-screen keyboard will raise only your blood pressure.
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1.11 Cameras
Again, the Play-Book has three megapixels up front and five around the back, enabling 1080p MPEG4 video recording in a tablet and, we must say, doing a fair job of it. You're going to want a lot of light but, if things aren't too dim, video quality is quite good, as you can see in the sample clip above. Images, too, need a lot of light to keep the grain monster at bay, and the lack of a flash doesn't help in that department, but get the lighting right and the results are decent. Focus is sharp and images look bright. This is definitely a tablet that you could use to take some attractive photographs, if you can get over the social repercussions of waving this seven-inch viewfinder around on vacation.
1.12 What's missing?
Non-Bridge productivity apps (e-mail, calendar, etc.) are the biggest omission, but other things are missing too, like that awesome scrapbooking app from TAT that got us feeling all crafty. It's nowhere to be found. Also missing? The mysterious Android compatibility, support that is coming but sadly won't be working at launch. The ability to run Android apps could totally change the game -- or it could be a non-event. We won't know until RIM flips the switch and lets us all try it out. Overall, the selection in App World and on the device itself is rather limited at the moment. RIM is quick to point out that there are thousands of apps in the pipeline, written in some combination of Adobe AIR or HTML 5 or Java or within the Play-Book's native compilation engine. We're sure they're coming, but right now it's slim pickins.
1.13 positioning
Research In Motion positioned Play-Book tablet as mostly a WiFi device, walking a delicate line between touting the device‘s BlackBerry tethering as a feature and trying to appeal to those who own other smartphones. Positioned as a portable 'fits in your jacket' kind of a lifestyle tool that is set to make the lives of its users easier on the move. The BlackBerry Play-Book is positioned on the premise 'Work smarter. Play Harder'. The target group for the Play-Book will be young professionals, aged upwards of 23 years. "While positioning it solely as an entertainment device is a tempting thought in the tab category, BlackBerry has always been about reaching out to the 'consumer' that resides in a professional," says Baruah. Hence, even with the Play-Book, BlackBerry hopes to target a mix of the enterprising man and the consumer who wishes to be a pro at what he does.
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2. Comparison of Different Tablets
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3. PESTEL Analysis
3.1 Political Factor
The security features of Blackberry have been under scrutiny in countries like China, India, and UAE. These countries has been asking access to the data and being able to intercept any data being transferred through the Blackberry messenger. RIM faces pressure for the usage of toxic contents, energy usage and recycling issues from European countries like UK, Germany etc. which affect the hygiene and safety standards for manufactures. RIMs operations would be affected by these regulations by these countries.
3.2 Economic Factors
The economic factors would play an important role in the tablet market as demand is fairly elastic and fairly based on the consumers‘ income. The current market situation and the downturn of the global economy consumers are not willing to spend on a product unless the product offers promised values at an affordable price. The spending power of the middle income group of India is increasing however they are looking for more value for money products. The image of Blackberry smartphones have declined in the minds of the consumer so it would put a huge pressure on Blackberry to price their tablet in the proper range in order to be affordable and also maintain its profit margins. The investment sentiments in the business world today are not encouraging, though many companies are trying to attract the consumers to their products through various means of advertising, promotion.
3.3 Social Factors
The population of India is more aware of the various advanced technological products available throughout the world. The major focus of tablet market is the youth of India which is very well connected on the various social network sites and well informed of the various products. The mature Indian consumers' increasing preference for tablets and the younger demographics' desire to use mobile Web technologies could see the Tablet PC'S markets revenues soar. Multi usage, great user experience, rising of 3G penetration, enhanced reach and changing lifestyles of consumers in India will further boost the demand for tablet PCs in India. They also should have their distribution and service centers in order to provide customer support as tablet would require a more skilled customer support team other than smart phones.
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3.4 Technological Factor
Blackberry is already losing out in the smart phone market, and its brand value is decreasing among the smart phone users. The operating system and the available applications for Blackberry Play-Book would be major factor for its success. The competitors like Samsung, Apple have their presence in this market already and Blackberry would have to provide more technologically advanced and user friendly features for it to succeed over its competitors. The OS of the Apple tablets and the Android based tablets have already established themselves in the market. Blackberry would have to convince the consumers that the OS of Blackberry is better and user friendly than OS of Apple & Android based tablets. Amazon is also come up with new Kindle tablet which is already creating buzz in the tablet market and has emerged as an important competitor after the success of its previous Kindle tablets. The technology used by Amazon Blackberry would have to continuously provide more and more applications to their consumers to keep them engaged with their brand and they are more involved with Blackberry world. These apps should be vast range from gaming, educational, business and also supporting social networks.
3.5 Environmental Factors
There has been a continuous importance given by any organization towards the environmental issues. The business activities should not harm the environment in any way in the market or country you are doing the business. The recycling of tablet would be an issue which Blackberry has to take into account and it may have a proper process in place for the same which would give Blackberry a distinct advantage if it adopts any such process. It may get support of some NGOs which support such activities by any organization. The electronic agencies have been accused of using South- Asia along with Indian market as a dumping ground for their lower quality or used electronic products. The issue of e-waste would have to be taken into account by Blackberry giving it a distinct advantage.
3.6 Legal Factors
Blackberry is already facing issues in meeting the security concerns of some countries in order to track or keep a check on the data being transferred through e-mails. They need to meet the legal requirements of the host nations as to providing access to the encrypted data from their servers.
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The increase in usage of 3G services would increase in the demand for tablets and the organizations providing tablets & connections services would then have to mandatorily provide access to the government agencies.
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4. Blackberry Play-Book - Five Forces Analysis
4.1 Intensity of Existing Rivalry
? Large industry size ? Fast industry growth rate
4.2 Bargaining Power of Suppliers
? Large number of substitute inputs ? High competition among suppliers ? Low concentration of suppliers
4.3 Threat of Substitutes
? Substantial product differentiation ? High cost of switching to substitutes
4.4 Bargaining Power of Customers
? Large number of customers ? Buyers require special customization
4.5 Threat of New Competitors
? ? ? ? ? ? Strong distribution network required High capital requirements Customers are loyal to existing brands Strong brand names are important Advanced technologies are required Entry barriers are high
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5. Play-Book – SWOT Analysis
5.1 Strengths
? Provide industry-specific solutions to more than 10 industries. ? Strong brand equity in B2B, especially Enterprise market through strong CRM and extensive RIM‘s Blackberry‘s brand name synonymous with ?competence‘ – Reliable, Intelligent, Successful and ?Sophistication‘- upper-class charms (Dubois et. al, 2007). ? Play-Book‘s new operating system QNX promises users higher web-based performance (speed and efficiency), and has passed developers tests.
5.2 Weakness
? RIM‘s brands (traditionally) do not have a mass-appeal in consumer-market (pursued the niche-market, slow to respond to market trend) ? RIM (traditionally) did not have a foothold in consumer‘s e-applications (apps). There are more than 100,000 apps available for iPhone, 17,000 for Android devices 4,300 for the BlackBerry in 2010 Q1.
5.3 Opportunity
? Tablets market is growing exponentially, Gartner predicts a sales (by units) doubling yearby-year until 2014 with growth of 181% in 2011 compared to 19, 490 units in 2010 (Gartner, 2010). ? Mobile-service operators might shift their subsidy for users to tablets (Milanesi, 2010). ? Consumers want more infotainment on-the-go. E.g. in cafes and in the car ? Consumers are becoming more price-sensitive ? Market growth in service industry segment in B2B segment of tablets
5.4 Threat
? Institutional barriers in emerging markets Like China, India and the Arabs nations. E.g. requirement to allow government access to its customer‘s information will infringe on customers ?freedom-of-speech‘ (Thunderbird, 2008; Sagani, 2010). ? Market incumbent, Apple will release revised version soon after Play-Book‘s launch threatening Play-Books after-launch sales momentum ? Rising competitions in the tablet market by established ICT players: HP (B2B), Motorola (B2C), Samsung (B2C), and potential new comers like Sony and Sharp. ? Growth in Cloud Computing: customers whisked-way.
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6. Customer Analysis
6.1 Who are the customers of Play-Book?
The BlackBerry Play-Book is the perfect choice for two types of tablet buyers 1.) BlackBerry loyalists who want the perfect complement to their Smartphone, 2) People who want a tablet primarily for mobile Web browsing from the conference room, couch, bedroom, and other places where you don't have a full PC and don't want to whip out a laptop. The Play-Book is not for everyone. It is for the customers who want a tablet primarily for surfing the Web. It is an excellent larger screen companion for your BlackBerry and expands its strengths to include top-notch Web browsing and multimedia capabilities. It has users who buy just as a Web tablet. The JavaScript and Flash performance are excellent on the PlayBook -- in terms of Flash; the implementation is significantly smoother and more stable than the Android implementation of Flash. The Play-Book is the first mobile device that provides something close to the full desktop Web experience.
6.2 When do they buy?
Users of Play-Book are people who spend lot of time in surfing like business executives, online companies, and sales manager sometimes upper middle class students who use it for e books and watching movies because of its large screen size. Therefore Customer buys this product when company is planning to give phones to its sales manager as additional benefits.
6.3 Where customer buys?
It is usually purchased by companies in bulk quantity and it is directly through company. Descriptive Variables Segmentation Variable for Consumer market of Blackberry Play-Book Variable – Geographic Region City size Density Typical Breakdown Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities Population greater than 4 million Urban
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Variable – Demographic
Age
Gender Family life cycle Income Occupation Education Religion Race Nationality Variable – Psychographic Social Class Lifestyle Personality Variable – Behavioral Occasions Benefits User status Usage rate Loyalty Status Attitude towards product
Typical Breakdown 25-50 (Business executive),They have mainly targeted business executives, along with that they have targeted normal consumers like young children of upper middle class who spends lot of hours in surfing and reading e books or that sort of activities Male & Female Young single person, Married business executives Greater than 12 lakhs Business executives, Sales Manager, Students, Online companies People who have knowledge of Internet and it can be students who are pursuing graduation All All All Typical Breakdown Middle class, Upper middle class, Upper class Occupation based Ambitious Typical Breakdown Regular Secured email, catalog of your organization's required and optional work apps Regular user Heavy High In beginning it was positive which later began to negative
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7. Market Potential & Sales Forecasting
The user experience is simple and self-evident, with no buttons and two basic gestures -- swipeup and swipe-down. It's as easy to use as the one-button iPad solution, but without just blatantly ripping off Apple. The other big innovation in the Play-Book is the Web browser. The page-load times are really quick, the fonts render beautifully, and RIM and Adobe worked together to pull off a Flash experience that virtually seamless. For example, once can take a lot of high quality Flash videos on Web page and throw into full screen mode and they look great and render flawlessly. You can even output these high quality videos to an HD TV via the Play-Book's HDMI port and they still look great. It has features which make it unique in its category: a. UI and performance - The user experience is the biggest surprise of the Play-Book. It is easy to learn, smooth to navigate, and has some of the best and fastest responsiveness that you'll find on any Smartphone or tablet. It is a completely different experience than a BlackBerry Smartphone. b. Full-featured Web browsing - As we've already talked about, the Web browsing experience on the Play-Book is excellent. The Flash implementation is well-done. Even though I'm not a fan of Flash, it's still a big part of the Web and will be for years, until HTML5 replaces it. Oh, and the Play-Book already handles HTML5 quite nicely. c. Usable word processor - One my biggest complaints with the iPad is that there isn't a decent word processing app for taking notes, writing letters/memos, building basic documents, etc. Apple's Pages app is a little too complicated than it needs to be and apps like iA Writer are nice but almost a little too bare bones. The Play-Book has the happy medium. Its Word To Go app (see screenshot) is the best word processing app I've used on a tablet. It is dead simple to use and has the most important basic features for building a good document. Plus, it's free and installed by default. This is where RIM's acquisition of Davaviz -- the company behind Documents to Go -- has really helped. d. Brilliant for multimedia - The graphics performance and LCD display on the Play-Book are another big plus -- and another pleasant surprise since the BlackBerry isn't known as a multimedia powerhouse (although its high-end phones have been making strides in recent years). The Play-Book is terrific for watching videos and looking at photos. The images are crisp, the colors are vibrant, and the performance is snappy. Market Potential can be improved by a. Email and Calendar - The thing you most often hear the Play-Book getting dinged for is the fact that it didn't ship with native email, calendar, and contacts apps (RIM says it will
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add them later this year). What the Play-Book does offer is the ability to use its Bridge feature to connect to a BlackBerry Smartphone and then use its email, calendar, and contacts on the Play-Book's larger screen. However, the actual data never resides on the Play-Book. It remains locked down in the BlackBerry phone, which is a plus for users that need tight security. The other thing to keep in mind is that if you use Web mail such as Gmail or Yahoo Mail, the Web experience on the Play-Book is good enough to handle light email and calendar tasks. b. Needs more Apps - The biggest problem with the BlackBerry Play-Book when you compare it to the iPad is the lack of apps. On the iPad, apps extend the functionality of the device in lots of different ways, for business, for personal productivity, for entertainment, and much more. While RIM claims that the Play-Book ships with 3,000 tablet-optimized apps -- "more than any of our competitors at launch," according to coCEO Mike Lazard‘s -- the problem is that the iPad has 75,000 apps now and a lot of important partners who are committed to the platform. RIM will never be able to compete with that, but if it can forge partnerships to get key apps like Amazon Kindle, Ever note, Drop box, and Netflix on to the Play-Book, then it would have a much easier time winning over a larger niche market. However, companies appear reticent to jump on the Play-Book bandwagon. Amazon initially announced that it would release a Kindle app for the Play-Book launch, but is dragging its feet in fulfilling that promise. c. 7-inch form factor has its limits - The thing that limits the great Web and multimedia experience on the Play-Book is the 7-inch screen. There are times when it's just a little too small to clearly read Web pages and when some of the details can get lost in videos due to the smaller screen. Declining Sales The sales have been declining for Play-Book ever since its launch in October 2010. Various sources have put the sales figure on launch day alone at approximately 50,000, exceeding the expectations. RIM announced in its quarterly earnings that half a million Play-Book tablets were shipped in the first quarter. However, after a lukewarm market reception, there were reports that the company revised its second-quarter estimates from 2.4 million down to 800,000 – 900,000 units. And When RIM announced their second quarter financial results; they revealed that they shipped 200,000 units. The combined unit shipment of 700,000 units during the first two quarter of release was only a small fraction of the 2-3 million units per quarter many had anticipated before the device's introduction. Following several months of poor sales RIM started discounting the price of Play-Book from its original $499 retail price to $300 at many outlets in late September 2011. The price was further reduced all over the world at various retail outlets in November due to apparent low market demand. RIM reduced the price of Play-Book by over 50 percent in India under a limited festive season offer till December 31, 2011. Buoyed by the huge response, the company had decided to extend the offer by a week. The 16 GB model of the Play17 | P a g e
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Book can be bought for Rs. 13,490 in the Indian market instead of its regular price of 27,990. While the 32 GB model is available for 15,990, the 64 GB model is being offered for 19,990 against their regular prices of 32,990 and 37,990 respectively. In December 2011, RIM announced that it had sold more than 150,000 Play-Books in the third fiscal quarter, compare to 200,000 shipments in the second quarter and 500,000 shipments in the first quarter. In total, RIM shipped to reseller channels 800,000 Play-Book tablets in the first 9 months of fiscal year 2012 (ending Nov 2011). Due to low demand for the Play-Book, RIM took a $485 million write-off to account for offering price discounts. In May 2012, Bloomberg claimed that RIM's Play-Book inventory has increased by two-thirds due to lack of demand for the tablet device. However, the Play-Book is a relatively popular tablet in Canada, accounting for nearly 20% of the tablet market in Research In Motion's home country in a report released on July 2012. As of March 2012, RIM has announced that it has sold one million Play-Books since its launch. On June 28th, 2012, RIM announced that it had shipped an additional 260,000 Play-Books and announced on the corresponding earnings calls that sell-through to customers was higher than this number. So, we can forecast the Play-Book demand to decrease or stay constant over the time until RIM decides to spur the marketing efforts along with new launches of Play-Book variants.
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8. Product Analysis
8.1 Positives of the current Play-Book
In the absence of a Home button, there‘s a new UI convention to learn. One can touch the frame along the bottom of the screen and swipe up when you want to return to the home screen. Touch sensitivity is very responsive, and the swipe controls work great. Taking a note from Palm‘s web OS, RIM brings multitasking to its QNX-based BlackBerry Tablet OS, letting customers switch back and forth between simultaneously running applications. By swiping a finger to the side of the screen, one can jump from the YouTube video back to a paused game of Tetris, without having to return to the home screen. Also cool: the ability to multitask with apps running on a peripheral display. When the Play-Book is hooked up to an HDTV, you can watch video at 1080p on the big screen while browsing the web on the PlayBook. Or, you can show a presentation on a projector while swiping through your speaking notes on the tablet. Any tablet debuting more than a year after the Apple‘s market-dominating iPad needs an edge. For the Play-Book, that edge is support for Adobe Flash, a feature that the iPad is famously lacking. RIM says it took over two years of working with Adobe to bring Flash to its tablet. RIM delivered several software updates during tests, showing that the company is still ironing out bugs. Flash stability increased with each update, and may well be even more stable. There is a learning curve to finding your way around the Play-Book. Unlike iOS or Android, there's no home button to act as an anchor for the experience. Instead, there's a basic vocabulary of gestures you'll need to learn, such as swiping upward from beneath the screen to access apps, swiping down from the top bezel to access menus, or swiping from either the left or right bezel to bounce between open applications. It's a bit of a secret handshake to get it all down, but once you do, you can move swiftly, and the speed with which you can jump between running apps is noticeably faster than anything else out there. It's a dream tablet for anyone with attention deficit disorder. Like switching between applications on your computer, the Play-Book keeps your open apps running in parallel at full throttle and takes no time jumping right in.
8.2 Blackberry Play-Book Tablet Lacks the Right Moves
The BlackBerry Play-Book tablet is a good-looking piece of hardware. Like the proto-humans in 2001: A Space Odyssey, you‘ll be eager to touch the monolithic object‘s black, button-less visage. But once you do, things get a little more complicated. The Play-Book‘s design exudes the same sense of finely honed ?business chic? that Research in Motion has perfected in its BlackBerry Smartphone. But the Play-Book‘s software suffers from several missteps and oversights, especially in the drought of useful apps — the very things that
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have made tablet such a hit — and the lacklustre performance of Adobe‘s Flash player. The major drawback was the drought of useful applications. BlackBerry‘s competitors Apple and Samsung are having hundreds of thousands of applications with compared to blackberry having very less in number. At a svelte 7.6 inches by 5.1 inches, the Play-Book is about the size of Samsung‘s Galaxy Tab, and considerably smaller than the Motorola Xoom and Apple iPad 2. That may prove bothersome if you prefer watching videos and gaming on a larger screen. Gamers preferred Apple and Samsung tablets than the Blackberry tablet. But in a trade-off for the small screen size, the Play-Book makes gains in portability. At just under a pound, long reading sessions don‘t cause as much fatigue as they do with larger tablets, and the rubberized backing adds a pleasing tooth to the grip. One won‘t be worried about dropping it on the floor of the bus. One of the first things you'll notice about the Play-Book is the complete lack of buttons on the front. Play-Book's navigation is handled using onscreen controls. It is not all gravy, though. The top edge of the Play-Book is a case study in bad design. The problem is the power/wake button, which is so small and recessed that you'll need to whittle down your fingertip to use it. When placed within the extra layer of a case, the power button was almost impossible to press. It's a problem, and one you'll encounter every day since the button is the only means to wake the screen from sleep. The nimble fingered among us may be able to look past it, but for many it will be a deal breaker that ranks up there with BlackBerry thumb. Dedicated buttons for volume and play/pause are also located on the top, but their only real crime is redundancy. Aside from being buttery smooth and a multitasking dynamo, the Play-Book's OS is a dramatic change from the cramped, trackball-focused OS RIM built its name on. It bears more than a passing resemblance to Palm's resurrected Web OS, but arguably surpasses it in its quest for laptop like performance. RIM is banking that those who bemoan the loss of screen real estate will use the tablet as a media hub for larger devices. One can drag and drop media files from your desktop to the PlayBook the same way you‘d move files to a USB flash drive. One can also transfer files wirelessly over your local network. But the fact that a marquee feature is strapped with such stability problems so close to the ship date was troubling the brand. Another glaring flaw is the Play-Book‘s complete lack of native e-mail, contacts and calendar apps. BlackBerry Smartphone owners can access e-mail on the Play-Book after installing RIM‘s Bridge app, which connects the phone to the tablet by Bluetooth, but was difficult to test this feature.
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Also worth considering is the relatively paltry selection on BlackBerry‘s App World, which contains roughly 3,000 apps. By comparison, Apple and Google‘s app inventories number in the hundreds of thousands. And some of the biggest apps — Facebook, a Gmail client, Twitter, Angry Birds — are conspicuously absent. With growing number of people getting addicted to games like Angry Birds, the absence of it does affect its sales. Clicking on the Facebook ?app? icon on the desktop brings up a web browser and loads the Facebook website. RIM has announced that an Android app player will be available on the Play-Book. This is another drawback. The android App Play-Book should bolster the number of available applications, but any Android apps ported to the Play-Book must be vetted by RIM before they can make it into the store. Under casual use conditions, the Play-Book‘s battery held up for close to eight hours, which is on par with both generations of the iPad. With heavy use of Flash-based sites (when they functioned) and 1080p video-watching, the Play-Book‘s battery hung in there for an impressive 5½ hours. It‘s important to note that this is a Wi-Fi only version of the Play-Book, and that the battery life may be different once RIM releases the promised 4G versions of the Play-Book for the big three U.S. carriers. RIM‘s Web-Kit-based browser is about as stable as your bipolar uncle. No native e-mail, calendar or contacts apps. App ecosystem is lacking. You‘ll need to install a driver before you can connect it to your PC or Mac. Runs Flash, sorta. BlackBerry‘s existing Play-Book has a number of drawbacks. The brand BlackBerry should come up with a new Play-Book product which should have all the features which the current Play-Book is lacking. Focus should be more on applications which are the backbone of its competitors namely Apple and Samsung. People could easily download number of applications for free or at a very low cost, which is still not in the case for BlackBerry. Blackberry‘s Play-Book tablet was one of the most fancied launches of 2011. For all the hype surrounding this launch, the ?Play-Book‘ ended up being one of the disappointments of the year 2011. In fact, it was thought of to be the game changer for the falling brand value of Research-inMotion‘s Blackberry services, but it ended up being another setback. Analysts are however of the opinion that the Play-Book could translate into a match-winner for the RIM if it was to take steps to remove the shortcomings that are inherent in the product capability and feature sets.
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9. Play-Book Strategy
Blackberry Play-Book has lost the battle in order to win over the competitor‘s customers. There were many reasons behind the failure of the Play-Book right from the technology to positioning to name every aspect of the product was seen to be of less value by the target consumers. The strategy to connect Blackberry mobile as a complimentary product to the Play-Book proved to be a disaster for Play-Book. Blackberry is majorly known for its mailing and messaging services. Blackberry Play-Book should have proved a product of great importance for the target group of Blackberry if the product would have offered some basic features. The product lost the battle in a motive to create a Point of Difference but failed in the strategy to develop Point of Parity with a difference. The end consumer found that the product is not having the Point of Parity with other Tablets available in the market and the product had the augmented features but lacked generic features such as – i. No Mobile Connectivity – The biggest issue with the Play-Book was a lack of its ability to work on GSM or CDMA signals. In other words, the tablet would only work on a wifi connection. Although this could well serve the needs of business professionals that needed a more compact method to be in touch with the corporate peers over a wifi network, a missing mobile link meant that the tablet could not be used to support the mobile workforce. As a result, the functionality of the tablet was severely retarded. Inherent Issues in Emailing – Considering the business background of the RIM‘s earlier products, it was clear that aspirations of the business users were clearly on ensuring flawless continuity and receipt of business emails. With the Play-Book, the users required a handset to be plugged with the tablet for accessing the messaging applications. While the messaging worked, it was clear that the functionality did not afford the simplicity that is sought by an end-user. Proprietary Operating System – Another drawback of the Play-Book was the operating system on which it runs; the QNX operating system is a close ended architecture that is proprietary to the RIM. This essentially means that the operating system functionality cannot be extended, and the impact is there to see in terms of a poor number and volume of apps for the RIM‘s Play-Book tablet. While, we do not really expect RIM to alter the QNX in anyway, we need to see if the company will lay special emphasis to promote the application development with a view to improve the apps density for the Play-Book owners.
ii.
iii.
The Play-Book tried to win over the competition by leveraging on the brand value of Blackberry but the technical flaw no. 2 (mentioned above) did not supported the objective as in order to
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enjoy the features of the tablet up to the optimal level one need to have a handset which will be plugged with the tablet to access the messaging application. RIM‘s BlackBerry OS falls short in every way. The operating system‘s design is sub-par, the built-in applications are hardly useful and the virtual keyboard is a disappointment. Although hardware design matters, the way in which an operating system functions is far more important. And unfortunately for RIM, its operating system just doesn‘t hold up to iOS. Play-Book also bared the heat of the change in overall brand positioning which also failed hence diluting the trust on the brand Blackberry. To summarize, Blackberry Play-Book should focus more on the following lines ? Design - The top edge of the Play-Book is a case study in bad design. ? Software – Play-Book‘s software suffers from several missteps and oversights, especially in the drought of useful apps — the very things that have made tablet such a hit. ? Useful Applications ? Power/Wake button – It is difficult to push the wake button, need to improve. ? Email - Inherent Issues in Emailing ? Games – Angry Birds which Blackberry doesn‘t support is one of the most proffered games currently ? App Ecosystem – The BlackBerry Play-Book App ecosystem is lacking. You‘ll need to install a driver before you can connect it to your PC or Mac. Runs Flash, sorta. One of the major reasons for the failure of the product was also its name Blackberry positioned itself as a corporate phone and in order to change the positioning of the whole brand as a cool brand the name was given as Play-Book but no one checked that the association of the brand was still as a corporate phone. The name doesn't suits its identity just think that the CEO tells in a AGM ", ?Wait guys, I will get my Play-Book to show the latest revenue!? Play-Book? In order to establish the product in the market RIM needs to keep in mind some of the issues which needs to be solved
a. It needs to clearly define its objectives b. Select the correct Target group c. Choose the competitor’s Target group d. A definite positioning for Blackberry Brand
Objectives – As Play-Book has continuously lost its market since its launch. Blackberry should not aim to win the competition in the market but to stabilize the product in the market and develop Brand association. Blackberry has lost the trust of its target group so it needs to gain it back not Play-Book as a product but Blackberry as a brand.
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Target Group – With the recent campaign ?Action starts here? Blackberry has now tried to target all the people who are in action and has broaden their target group from focusing just on the corporate.
9.1 Growth Strategy
Growth in Share Strategy
Market Development
Market Peneteration
New Segment
Convert New Users
Existing Customers
Competitors Customers
Targeting the competitor‘s customers can be a death game for Play-Book. As Play-Book is no match with ipad Blackberry cannot win the competition until they develop the product up-to parity, design differentiation factors and rebuild the brand associations. At this point of time Blackberry can go for targeting the customers from New segment (which they have broadened), and/or Covert New Users and focus on existing customers. 9.1.1 Strategy 1 – RIM needs to realize that the product needs to fit its target audience. Play-Book will be no one‘s child if tries to please each and every one. So in order to reposition Play-Book it can be relaunched with the name ?BOOK? with OS10 which is the latest OS by Blackberry and adding all the missing technical features mentioned above. The ?BOOK? will be a much higher version of Play-Book which will be independent and will not need any supporting mobile device. Also OS10 which supports other external application will bring the tab at par with other products in the market also changing the name will have a higher impact on the target audience. The OS 10 Book will also have the Blackberry messenger facility like the phones and will deliver every application which is important for the professionals. The Blackberry messenger of OS10 is expected to have the audio and video calling facilities this will act as a point of differentiation for the Blackberry Tab in the market. This product will be priced at par or above with other tabs in the market and unlike Play-Book whose prices have been now brought down to about $185. This
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product will slowly cannibalize the current Play-Book which is not able to gain trust from the customers and also has a bad reputation. 9.1.2 Strategy 2 Blackberry has now come up with the campaign ?Action starts here? and has diversified its target audience; the whole brand is on a shift and is repositioning itself. Blackberry can position Play-Book as an entry level product in the tab world by focusing on the target audience which is moving towards professionalism e.g. students from Std. 8th – 12th, graduate school students. While for the senior level they can launch ?BOOK? with OS 10 as mentioned above.
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10.
Pricing Trends
In an interview, Sunil Lalvani, Director Enterprise Sales, Research In Motion, India said ?We have seen positive momentum with the promotional pricing levels and have decided to maintain an aggressive pricing strategy in order to help continue the momentum. We believe this attractive pricing combined with the compelling features in Play-Book OS 2.0 and locally relevant applications make this offering extremely competitive.” The slash in the prices of Blackberry Play-Book was not entirely a strategic move of RIM but rather a consequence of the poor worldwide sale of Play-Book. At the time of its launch in April, some analysts expected RIM could sell as many as six million Play-Books in the device‘s first year on the market. However, RIM has sold fewer than a million units, and now has a stockpile of inventory. At the end of last year, Research In Motion (RIM) had slashed prices for its Play-Book, which came down to Rs 24,490 for the 64GB version from its launch price Rs 37,990. The prices have gone down further by approximately Rs 19,990. On the other hand, the 16GB version is available at only Rs 13,990. A gradual decline in prices is inevitable for consumer electronics makers. But the recent downward pressure on tablet pricing also reflects a broader volatility in the market that has been turned upside down by the arrival of cheaper, snazzier models. Play-Book faces direct competition at the hands of Apple iPad and Galaxy Pad where both of them have outdone PlayBook in the terms of market share comprehensively and both have proved to have significantly better value proposition compared to the Play-Book. The current price strategy of Play-Book is in line with the market scenario prevailing in the tablet market. However, the need of the hour for Play-Book is to come up with an attractive Product and Promotion strategy to get the costumer‘s attention and reposition itself to come out of the otherwise dismal performance of Blackberry Play-Book.
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11.
Promotion Strategy
As we have already seen, Blackberry has failed owing to the above mentioned results. Now in order to promote the 2 new products (1 alternative in each strategy) as mentioned below, the following strategies can be used – i) In order to promote the new blackberry ?BOOK? having the added features, the proper promotion should be carried out. Blackberry Play-Book had failed due to the limited compatibility issues of various apps and soft-wares. The new blackberry book which is now having no compatibility issues will need to emphasize upon this aspect for promotion. People will have to be made aware about the added features. People resonate with blackberry as the product having a lot of complexities and a product meant for the corporates. They need to be made aware of the improvements and advances in the product. Hence the pre-launch, launch and post-launch promotions need to be scaled up greatly. Blackberry should come out with advertisements mentioning the advantages of blackberry book over blackberry Play-Book, thus enabling the users to understand the difference between the 2. Admitting the mistake and correcting it increases the visibility of the product. This would help blackberry to reduce the sales of its Play-Book and increase the same of its new blackberry book. This ultimately would lead to the cannibalization of blackberry Play-Book by blackberry book. The launch of the product should be a mega-event involving some of the eminent personalities representing the target-user group. The pre-launch promotion forms an integral part of a product‘s success. Various pre-launch promotion techniques such as story-building around the product and its apps, social media marketing, etc. should be used. The 2nd strategy suggested is to change the target audience for the blackberry Play-Book and make the new audience as the students between the age group of 10 and 20 along with increasing the focused group related apps and games. This strategy also aims at a re-launch of a new blackberry Play-Book for the presently targeted segment i.e. the people above the age group of 20. The new blackberry Play-Book would again contain advanced features suited to the needs of the targeted audience. Here too, the role of promotion techniques is an essential one. We propose to use experiential promotions for the new Play-Book. The new Play-Book can be made available for use at luxury resorts, flights, etc. where the people intend to have something for passing the time rather than getting bored. Such proper placing of the product for
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promotion would help users get acquainted with the interface and develop an understanding of the same. And then as is said, ?One who uses blackberry once, uses it forever?, the saying will hold true. The new features of the product will intrigue the user to buy it and hence help increase the sales. Such other forms of marketing as using in the board room discussions, grand events would also help increase the visibility of the product thereby ultimately leading to the increased sales. Thus using each of these strategies, blackberry would aim at bridging the gap between the need of the customers and the need-fulfillment by the company.
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12.
Channels of Distribution
RIM is always eager to partner with other companies to develop and sell products and services that give BlackBerry smart phone users added performance and functionality. Through RIM‘s Partner programs, such as the BlackBerry Alliance Program, partners get the tools, support and endorsement from RIM to help develop their robust and innovative solutions for BlackBerry smart phones and wireless solutions. RIM Partners are given limited permission to use the RIM Trademarks and Logos, thereby increasing visibility among BlackBerry tablets users and wireless carriers and depth in their customer base. Generally, RIM will partner with companies and license the right to use certain RIM Trademarks and Logos to companies that have established distribution channels and high customer satisfaction with a proven product/service which adds performance and functionality to the BlackBerry® tablets experience. Research In Motion (RIM) (Nasdaq: RIMM; TSX RIM) announced a collaboration with Redington India to establish national retail distribution channels for BlackBerry tablets. This strategic business initiative will help RIM more effectively tap the fast growing mobile communications market in India. The Play-Book is being distributed nationally through Redington India and Ingram Micro, initially in 1,000 retail stores across eight cities, the company said in a statement. As part of the retail distribution agreement with Redington India, BlackBerry tablets and service plans from supported carriers will initially be available in retail and modern trade outlets across nine cities: Mumbai, Delhi, NCR, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Pune and Ahmedabad. Redington intends to expand the retail footprint in a phased manner and will offer a wide range of BlackBerry products beginning with the BlackBerry Pearl series, the BlackBerry Curve series and the BlackBerry Bold tablets. Commenting on the partnership Mr. Rajesh Khetarpal, Head-Digital Life Style & Telecom SBU, Redington India said: ?Redington has always believed in forging relationships that deliver value to end customers. Through this collaboration, Research In Motion will leverage our professional services and pan-India reach to increase the availability of BlackBerry tablets across the country.? Ms. Frenny Bawa, Vice President, India, Research In Motion said on the partnership: ?This is an exciting phase of growth for Research In Motion and its partners in India and we are delighted to be working with Redington. This collaboration with Redington, together with our strong carrier partnerships and industry leading products and services, will further strengthen our market position and presence in India.?
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12.1 Redington India
Redington (India) Ltd is in the business of supply chain management (end-to-end). It has its operations in South Asia, Middle East and Africa. Redington has market presence in more than 18 countries. Its cliental includes information technology, telecom, lifestyle and consumer electronics products, worldwide. Redington India Ltd has successfully positioned itself as a focused distribution player with a significant reach across India, Middle East and Africa. Our Mission is to provide the best value proposition to our vendors and reseller partners through innovation and responsiveness and be the partner of choice for them.
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12.1.1 Business Model of Redington
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13.
Bibliography
a. http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/13/blackberry-Play-Book-review/ b. http://zapp5.staticworld.net/news/graphics/206392-206392-tablet_wars_chart_original2_original.jpg c. http://cashmereandsilk.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/Play-Book-part-two-swot-tows-nokidding/
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