It might build a reference design for other makers to adopt

Aug 3, 2012 07:39 GMT  ·  By

Canadian mobile phone maker Research In Motion has had a hard time lately keeping up with competition on the smartphone market, and its struggle might not be over just yet.

In fact, the company is expected to send home 3,000 more of its employees in the coming weeks, only months before its new mobile operating system, BlackBerry 10, is set to arrive on shelves.

Boasting a great deal of enhancements when compared to the current version of the platform, the upcoming BB10 OS is expected to resurrect the company, at least this is what enthusiasts dream of.

RIM, however, sees things a bit differently, it seems, and acknowledges the fact that the smartphone market has expanded greatly in the past years, and that competition is fiercer than ever.

In fact, the company’s CEO, Thorsten Heins even confirmed to The Telegraph that he does not see RIM capable of keeping the pace with other smartphone vendors when it comes to mass producing new devices.

Even if the upcoming BlackBerry 10 platform would prove great, the fact that RIM does not push to the market tens of new smartphone models as other companies do might be a real problem.

However, the solution to this crisis would be a simple one, licensing. It has been rumored before, and is now confirmed that RIM is indeed considering the possibility to license the new OS to other smartphone vendors out there, to increase platform’s presence on shelves.

“We don’t have the economy of scale to compete against the guys who crank out 60 handsets a year. We have to differentiate and have a focused platform,” RIM’s CEO reportedly stated.

“To deliver BB10 we may need to look at licensing it to someone who can do this at a way better cost proposition than I can do it. There’s different options we could do that we’re currently investigating.”

There’s no telling what approach RIM might consider to this, especially since it’s likely that it won’t provide licensees with many options when it comes to coming up with their own designs for the platform.

In the end, it’s all about the BlackBerry experience, and RIM has been careful enough over the years to keep it untouched.

“You could think about us building a reference system, and then basically licensing that reference design, have others build the hardware around it – either it’s a BlackBerry or it’s something else being built on the BlackBerry platform,” Thorsten Heins also stated.

Considering the fact that the BlackBerry email service is seen as one of the best in the world, this approach could easily pan out, that’s for sure. However, with BB10 coming out only next year, there’s still plenty of time for RIM to unveil more on its plans on the matter.