Craig McLennan, RIM’s managing director for North America appeared upbeat as he took to the stage at IQMetrix’s Wireless Retail Summit in Scottsdale Arizona today, blowing BlackBerry’s trumpet while declaring his firm was “doing really, really well.”
“It’s an honor to be here: I’m representing a successful Canadian company, at an event held by another successful Canadian company. That’s a rarity,” he joked before rolling off an impressive list of statistics to his eager audience of over 700 independent wireless retailers from across the country.
RIM, said McLennan , had partnered with over 500 companies around the world, in 175 countries. The firm boasted 265 million business and enterprise subscribers with a 94% penetration of Fortune 500 companies, 12 million devices shipped last year, representing over 30% year-over-year growth, with one in 12 people in North America owning a BlackBerry.
In addition, said McLennan, the BlackBerry Curve currently represents the number-one smartphone in North America and is number-two in the world, with BlackBerry making up 34% of the U.S. smartphone market.
Ticking off another few firsts, McLennan noted BlackBerry also had the #1 engagement on Facebook (22 million users) and Twitter (eight million downloads) with 35 million users of BlackBerry app world and 26 million users of the firm’s increasingly popular BlackBerry messenger.
“Our brand is really setting the stage for expeditious growth around the world,” McLennan declared, confident, despite drawing a ribbing from Apple CEO Steve Jobs earlier today on the Cupertino firm’s earning’s call.
Jobs, making a surprise entrance to the call had announced “We’ve now passed RIM, and I don’t see them catching up with us,” before going on to goad the BlackBerry maker to leave its comfort zone if it wanted to attract developers to its platform.
McLennan, however, feels his firm has certainly pushed its own boundaries with the recent release of BlackBerry OS 6, claiming the company’s goal had been to “meet the needs of our users and bring in some new things too. Fast and familiar –- like a ‘home renovation.’”
There were, McLennan said, six reasons people should feel excited about BB OS 6: its Intuitive, fluid design; simple setup; social feeds and views; fast, rich web browsing; engaging multimedia experience; and universal search.
“We used the BB OS 6 as our acceleration point… toward the PlayBook (BlackBerry tablet),” he said before producing one of the firm’s 7” wonders and waving it about on-stage.
“We are changing the game with the PlayBook,” he saidnoting “the vision for this product is to deliver on what you expect AND to deliver on what you don’t expect.”
For those who missed the big announcement a few weeks back, the sub 1lb PlayBook features a Hi-res LCD screen, dual-core processer billed to make it 2.5-4x faster than any other tablet on the market, Flash 10.1, and Enterprise Ready services which allow it to be connected to one’s BB smartphone via Bluetooth.
McLennan also talked up the PlayBook’s “incredible industrial design,” and “uncompromised web browsing,” digging at Apple for its lack of Flash.
“We brought your desktop, in an uncompromised fashion, and brought it to mobility,” he proclaimed.
As for RIM’s upcoming goals, McLennan said his firm was focused on growing channel leadership and cited a doubling in number of RIM’s sales & distribution team in just nine months.
McLennan went on to say the firm was currently conducting the largest media campaign in its history, both TV and online, with the aim of gathering 6.2 billion customer impressions on multiple segments by highlighting the enhanced browsing capability of BlackBerry, increasing app proliferation and appealing more to younger users.
“We are really, really accelerating on the technology side and are working on a number of near-term opportunities to help you improve the distribution of our devices,” McLennan promised retailers.
Incidentally, as of Monday, retailers had yet another BlackBerry product to distribute as RIM unveiled the Blackberry “Style” flip phone available through Sprint and US Cellular. The ‘Style’ has a full QWERTY keyboard and trackpad with a flip form factor. It’s also the first BlackBerry smartphone without a touchscreen to be loaded with BlackBerry 6.
