How RIM can save BlackBerry: Adopt Windows Phone

Everyone knows that the market share of the once-dominant BlackBerry is on a fast decline, both among consumer users and enterprise users. The causes are also well known: Research in Motion’s decision for several years to ignore the change in user demand, soon made clear by the rise of first the iPhone and then Android, as well as its ineffective moves to belatedly get with the program.

At this point, competing with iOS and Android is not in the cards for RIM. The world doesn’t need or want another iPhone- or iPad-like operating system, as Hewlett-Packard painfully discovered in its short-lived WebOS initiative. iOS and Android satisfy that need. But when I talk with BlackBerry aficionados, I hear the same rationale for their devotion: They don’t want apps, media, and all the other computer-in-your-pocket capabilities that Apple brought to the table. They want a simple messaging device for email, social networking, instant messaging (à la BlackBerry Messenger and SMS), and so on. That’s long been the BlackBerry’s strength and its key use in business, after all.

Many longtime BlackBerry users like the old-fashioned, textual UI of the BlackBerry, and they dislike the icon-heavy, app-centric UI of iOS, Android, and the newest crop of iPhone-wannabe BlackBerrys. And RIM has had recent success in an unlikely market: Teenagers and 20-somethings in Britain, for example, like the BlackBerry precisely because it is a messaging device.

But even with the diehards and the young texters, BlackBerry is losing market share steadily. It doesn’t help that RIM’s attempts to appeal to a broader audience further confuses the market. RIM pushes military-grade security capabilities on one end and games on the other, but most of its devices are not well suited to run games and rich apps in terms of their screens and horsepower.

Here’s a solution: RIM should modernize the BlackBerry where it stands out and is beloved: with messaging. When you look around the industry, you’ll notice another mobile operating system that’s all about modern mobile messaging: Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7. RIM should adopt Windows Phone 7 instead of pursuing its quixotic quest to create an iOS wannabe with the QNX operating system it bought 18 months ago. (That effort suffered a delay just this week.)

If RIM could port its BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) security APIs to Windows Phone 7 and clean up some of the UI misfires in Windows Phone 7 (unreadable message text, for example), it would have a compelling messaging device with a much more intuitive UI that would appeal to both its traditional older-adult users and the socially centered young users. It would no longer be a way-behind-the-curve iOS wannabe, but a modern device for those who want to communicate. In other words, it would play to its strengths in a modern context.

If RIM can’t bring itself to do that, maybe Nokia should buy RIM and do the security and usability modifications to Windows Phone 7 to gain the high security capabilities so beloved by CSOs, then use the BlackBerry brand for these modern messagers. That would help Nokia stand out from the coming crowd of Windows Phone devices. (Nokia’s Lumia smartphones use the stock Windows Phone OS, though Nokia has added a few custom apps, and it has promised to work with Microsoft to advance the platform for future smartphones.)

It will be necessary for Nokia to distinguish itself from the Windows Phone 7 crowd, where companies such as HTC and Samsung offer solid hardware already and where I believe Windows Phone 7 will lose out to the more capable Android. (Unlike Nokia, the other device makers have their eggs in both the Windows Phone 7 and Android baskets, so they don’t need Windows Phone to succeed to stay in business.) Reworking a version of Windows Phone 7 as a BlackBerry messaging device could be just the ticket, especially given Nokia’s ambitions of appealing to buyers in developing countries, where bandwidth is low and pricey, as well as smartphone-hungry consumers in industrialized regions such as North America, Europe, and east Asia.

If RIM or Nokia doesn’t seize the Windows Phone 7-based BlackBerry opportunity, then maybe Microsoft or some other smartphone manufacturer could add the level of security found in iOS, Android 3, and the long-dead Windows Mobile to Windows Phone — that’s proven enough for the vast majority of users — and sell a usability-tweaked version of Windows Phone 7 as what I call the Raspberry.

There’s a big enough subset of people who want a modern mobile messaging device, and Windows Phone 7 is close to meeting their needs. With a few adjustments, it could save the BlackBerry or at least preserve the BlackBerry’s strengths in a new “Raspberry” vehicle.

This article, “How RIM can save BlackBerry: Adopt Windows Phone,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Galen Gruman’s Mobile Edge blog and follow the latest developments in mobile technology at InfoWorld.com. Follow Galen’s mobile musings on Twitter at MobileGalen. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.