A Job posting made yesterday by Research In Motion Limited (NASDAQ:RIMM) (TSE:RIMM) declared that the company was seeking a senior iOS developer. The information was garnered from a jobs posting. RIM has been looking to alter its mobile strategy for some time after a string of failures. This could be the beginning of an a new product that could alter Rim’s future and perhaps save the ailing company’s fortunes. The company’s outlook was published by Morgan Stanley recently and showed an insecure future at the canadiam company.
The company has been desperate to change since last year when it replaced its twin CEOs with a single executive. The once dominant player in the smartphone market has fallen to a sideline and outside figure. News released yesterday showed that Apple’s iPhone had outsold the Blackberry in RIM’s home country of Canada. The move wasn’t unexpected but was still a psychological blow for the company. The tech firm has been a fish out of water in the mobile computing market for some time. It was left behind when Apple revolutionized the market with their iPhone and has failed to recover its brand.
The move to hire an iOS developer is an interesting one by the company and it could be aimed at any one of several objectives. The first would be a simple Blackberry designed cliet for personal organisation and email which could be popular with fans of the older systems. The second is a more overarching application which could take a much more active role in the functionality of a smart phone. Such an application could reroute mail delivery through RIM’s servers as it is done on Blackberrys. Such a service may be popular with businesses seeking to eliminate their exposure on security and privacy issues, though RIM no longer remains squeaky clean on that front. It still manages to come off better than both Apple and Google on Privacy however.
What ever the company’s strategy in developing their iPhone app (apps?), they need to do it quickly. The company’s stock continues to fall, it’s less than 20% of its 12 month high, and analysts put its fortunes in dire straits. If the company can recovery by moving its services to smart phones developed by other manufacturers perhaps it can remain competitive in the market. Otherwise RIM does not seem to be a good bet in the current tech market.
