Blackberry: Unique Business Model (2)

Unique business model

1999 Before the launch of BlackBerry, RIM was not large and was unknown to most people. However, after the launch of Blackberry, it entered the world's top 500 in less than ten years. In addition to the success of products and technologies, it also depends on its unique business model.

Blackberry has now entered 170 countries and cooperated with more than 500 operators. The cooperation mode is basically: BlackBerry provides mobile phone equipment, software and mobile solutions, but does not directly operate the market. Operators use their own brands and huge network development market to collect monthly service fees. RIM and the operator will allocate the service fee according to the proportion agreed in the contract. Because RIM only cooperates with operators, and BlackBerry users will choose the push mail service, RIM can basically accurately calculate the number of BlackBerry users in the world, and the figure of 32 million is also calculated in this way.

RIM is smart. It always knows what role it should play in the industrial chain and who it should cooperate with. Thomas lee briefly analyzed that, taking China as an example, the market is huge. Regardless of complexity, it is easy for BlackBerry to reach 1000 corporate customers, but how many people and service systems does RIM need to support this market when it reaches 10000 and 10000 customers? Operators are the ones who know the market best and are closest to customers. The advantage of RIM is to make good use of products and technologies, build a good platform, and be able to stably connect global operators to jointly provide good services for end users. Many domestic experts believe that Blackberry's business model is more vital and has established a mutually beneficial and benign cooperation model with operators.

RIM started late in the China market and has been in the exploration stage for the past few years. China's strategy is divided into three steps: first, focus on large enterprise users, then extend to small and medium-sized enterprises, and finally the individual user market. Looking for customers is mainly to see who is more sensitive to efficiency improvement, first choose the industry, then look at the enterprise, and then look at people.

Thomas lee said that industries such as finance, logistics and retail are very sensitive to efficiency improvement, as are large enterprises and corporate executives. So we can see that BlackBerry's customers in China are Ping An Insurance, China International Finance Corporation, China International Trust and Investment Corporation, COSCO, Baosteel, Essence Securities and other large enterprises.

Generally speaking, there are three fees to pay for choosing BlackBerry services and applications: mobile phone equipment fee, BlackBerry enterprise server and software fee, and service fee. The first two payments are basically a one-time investment, and the service fee is charged by China Mobile according to different packages such as 398 yuan, 498 yuan and 598 yuan per month. According to the different policies of China Mobile's provincial branches, the fees and packages are also different.

At present, BlackBerry is gradually paying attention to SMEs. Xie believes that this market has great potential, and BlackBerry is also stepping up research and development of related products. It's a pity that the personal user market of BlackBerry has not yet started compared with the entry of iPhone into China with great fanfare. Maybe the blackberry has already felt the pressure. If we continue to go step by step, it may be a big unknown how much market share we can steal from iPhone, Nokia and Google Android in the future.

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