Research In Motion outlined a programme of incentives to encourage its biggest customers to run its soon-to-launch line of BlackBerry 10 devices, seeking to persuade corporations and government users to stick with its secure smartphones.
RIM is betting that the devices, to be launched on January 30, will revive its fortunes. That will depend to a large extent on the response from RIM’s enterprise customers -- the business users who value BlackBerry’s strong security features.
RIM, once a smartphone pioneer, has bled market share to Apple’s iPhone and devices powered by Google’s market-leading Android operating system, even among the business customers who once used BlackBerry exclusively.
RIM says its new devices will be faster and smoother than previous BlackBerry phones and will have a large catalogue of apps, which are crucial to the success of any new line of smartphones.
It now plans to phase in a BlackBerry 10 Ready Program for enterprise customers, initially offering online training and webcasts, and then providing free trade-ups of licenses and services.
“We will be aggressively reaching out to our customers to make sure they are aware of this program,” said Bryan Lee, senior director of enterprise at RIM. “We see this as really the lynchpin for helping our customers to transition to BB10.”