RIM Continues Slow Death, Admits It May Start Licensing BlackBerry

As we’ve recounted in the past, Research In Motion is about to go the way of Palm. They’ve got two quarters of losses to swallow and no new software to reverse the trend of losing market share to Apple and Google until the beginning of next year. And now the next stage of the mobile OS death process is kicking in: insisting they’re going to license it.

“QNX is already licensed across the automotive sector –we could do that with BB10 if we chose to. The platform can be licensed.”

To be fair, licensing is actually a good idea and it points the way for RIM. The problem is that it points away from mobile devices.

It’s like this: RIM can’t win against the iPhone and it definitely can’t win against Android. Even Microsoft is having a tough time of it and they’ve got billions to spend and high incentive to keep fighting.

But increasingly other objects in our lives are going to be wired. Cars are one example, but many nerds dream of the Internet of Things, where you can use your laptop, phone, or tablet to send orders to anything in your house that accepts a microchip.

Right now it’s largely a dream with a few startups trying to stake their claim to get purchased by the big boys. But RIM could be huge in this sector. Apple and Google don’t want to program the next generation of refrigerators. Google wants to build a self-driving car, not software for cars.

Let go of winning in the mobile space, RIM, and you could win everywhere else.

image courtesy a_ninjamonkey on Flickr

 

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