Research in Motion Company

Background information

Research in motion limited (RIM) (TSX: RIM, NASDAQ: RIMM) is company in Canada that deals with telecommunication and wireless devices and has been known for the outstanding developing of blackberry Smartphone (Sweeny, 2009). The company has it is headquarter in waterloo Ontario in Canada and they are the main sponsor of RIM park that is situated in the northeast of the city. Mike Lazaridis who is currently the company co-CEO founded the company. He works alongside Jim Balsilie.

Before the company produced Blackberry, it was working with RAM Mobile Data and Ericsson in turning Mobitex wireless date into a two-way paging and wireless e-mail network. During their work with the Eriksson Company, they developed Inter@ctive pager 950 that started functioning in 1998. This device was a size of a bar soap and competed very well with Sky Tel two-way paging network that had developed by the Motorola Company.

The Canadian institution and venture capital investors funded its early development in 1995. It did this through placing it in the privately held company. Working Ventures Fund Inc. made a step by investing in the company with five million Canadian dollars. This was to be used to complete the company development of the two-way paging system hardware and software (RIM. 2011). RIM floated shares in the Toronto Stock Exchange in January 1998. Before initial public offer, they had raised thirty million Canadian dollars in pre-IPO financing.

Since the time that they sold their IPO in the stock exchange market, they have produced several devices that run using GSM, CDMA and iDEN networks. Blackberry devices did very well in the corporate world as it was used to send messages very fast and was very efficient in sending e-mails. This made it to be nicknamed 'Crack berry' as they called crack cocaine as some of the people believed that one could not live without it. Research in Motion and Information Associates reached a licensing agreement in 2006. This was meant to ensure that the RIM Company would offer Pocket Mac that was used by the Blackberry to Mackintosh users free. The RIM Company grew tremendously and in 2008, the Mediacorp Canada Inc. named it among the Canada Top hundred employers in the MacLean's news magazine.

RIM International strategy

In 2009, RIM Company announced their international expansion strategy that would involve global operation. This was done through opening an office in North Sydney in Australia. This new office had training facilities, a strategic partner marketing centre, research and development center as well as technical support service center. This strategy leads to increase in the work force in the company to 12000 jobs that the company offers worldwide according to Pearson, & Gritmacher,1990.
In the spirit of international expansion strategy, the company in June 2009 announced that they were to acquire Dash Navigation who was the manufacturers of Dash Express. On the same year on august, they were capable of acquiring Torch Mobiles therefore enabling them to include Webkit-based browser on the Blackberry. The idea of expansion and urge of exploiting the market may have contributed to the RIM Company to be announced by the Fortune Magazine on 18 august 2009 as the fastest growing company in the world (Hempel, 2009). They gave a growth rate of 84% in profits growth within a span of three years.

The company continued its expansion strategy in 2010 by acquiring Viigo Company, which is the developer of the Blackberry applications. This is a company based in Toronto Canada. It went ahead on April in the same year QNX Soft Ware systems. This was done through the agreement that was signed by the company in corroboration with Harman International on 12 of April 2010. This collaboration will ensure that RIM Company is able to integrate and enhance user experience with Smartphone and in-vehicle audio and infotainment systems. The deal will also ensure that the company integrate other values to the company such as intelligent peripherals that will help add intellectual property to the RIM's portfolios. This will help the company to provide ling term synergies to the company's devices through complimentary operating systems experts in both QNX and RIM Company.

It was until September 2010 that the company announced the launching of the BlackBerry Playbook tablet computer according to Fortune Magazine. 2009. This was projected to be in the market by the beginning of 2011. By May 2010, RIM operating system occupied 10.4% of Smartphone operating system in the market.

Culture of the organization

The main culture that the company upholds is that of no limits and raises the bar. By this they mean, each employee should see themselves as part of the company organization that is the hub of innovation especially ion this 21st century. This internationally recognized wireless technology leaders offers dynamic and an environment that is award winning to ensure that their employees learn more about their careers and their career growth are limitless (Dilger, 2009). To ensure that the employees always the bar either in their economical, knowledge and exposure life as well as that of the company, the company inspire them to work hard and inspire each other as they celebrate their success together. The company meets the challenges that are brought by competitive market by remaining true to the values that underlies their corporate culture.

The culture that they uphold in the company comprise of remaining to be highly respected designer, manufacturer and marketer of highly innovative and globally acknowledged wireless solutions that especially include the Blackberry wireless. They are up to ensure that the traditions that they have set through award winning technologies that are used by various organizations worldwide are always upheld. The company holds a culture of energy and excitement that is provided by the making the employees achieve the highest potential through delivering extra ordinary results. The environment offered in the company is energy driven. They uphold expertise team that ensures that they make a difference in the life of their customers. The company creates a condition of working that enables the employees to be proactive, innovative and motivated in search of achieving the continued RIM company success.

Another culture that is ultimately held by the company is that of passion and pride to their people. Their employees are driven by the challenges and the pride brought about by their achievements. They set their standards high to ensure that they acquire their results in the competitive environment. Finally, it is their greatest passion to reward and recognize teams and individuals according to their contribution in the company. They ensure that they offer their employees a chance to work with experts in a rapidly growing industry making them to have limitless energy to achieve anything in the company.

Ethics in international dealings

The codes of ethics that are upheld by RIM company due to international dealings are in accordance with Registered International Movers Code of Ethics (John . 2000). After virtually being inspected and tested by the American Moving and Storage Association, the company was certified as a Registered International Movers. Therefore, they are legible of upholding the Research in Motion international dealing ethics. They are as follows.

They have pledged to provide cost efficient, honest, time sensitive and quality driven international households goods that include moving and storage service provision. They are also out to emphasis times claim reduction and customer satisfaction. They are entitled to handle customers' goods that are entitled to them with the highest degree of professionalism possible and with a lot of integrity.

The company ensures that they are conscious of customers needs and seek always to continually improve their services they provide to meet the customers needs al the time. As a form of international ethics, they ensure that they engage on an ongoing training and offers education to their employees and other people over the globe formally and on the job. This is to ensure that they are capable of propagating their technological knowledge to the people for future generation. The company upholds the international ethics of work through ensuring that they perform their service as a company and having great concern and welfare of the company's employees and especially their safety.

The company is out to represent RIM program all time through their professionalism and personal conduct of each employee (Lendino, 2009).. They are therefore out to adhere to policy of honesty, truth, integrity, and complete fairness in dealing with people both nationally and internationally. The company is liable of adhering to rules and regulations of their certification program. This is to ensure that they offer control of their business and ensure that they capable of meeting their requirement as per certification even in the international level. They finally are dedicated in complying with U.S federal, state trade regulations, and anti-trust law to ensure that they work harmoniously with international environment.

RIM market entry

Research in motion uses different marketing strategy. By use of different marketing strategy, they were able to ensure that they get the right mix of the strategy that enables them to meet their long-term success. Some of the marketing strategy that they have used especially to penetrate the international market areas follows.

Licensing

The company has registered as International Mover through America Moving and Storage Association. These acts as a market entry strategy to ensure that it get to international market. This gives the company a permit to work all over the globe as it complies with the antitrust and U.S federal regulation laws. Through this compliance, the company is capable of investing in other country freely.

Foreign Direct Investment

The company is engage in foreign direct investment as a market entry strategy. The company has gone to Australia and constructed their offices where they started from the scratch. These offices were located in North Sydney in Australia. They offered training facilities, a strategic partner marketing centre, research and development center as well as technical support service center. Through them, they would enjoy the foreign market entry, as they would introduce their products as they would as local established company.

Joint ventures

The company has used this market entry strategy in many areas. In a place like China, the China Unicom is distributing the Blackberry Smartphone. This is the second largest telecommunication company in China. RIM Company in pursuit of market entry formed a joint venture with them to ensure that they distribute their products. The RIM Company is also in joint venture with the biggest China Telecommunication Company, which is China Mobile Communication to deliver Blackberry phones that support China Mobile proprietary TD-SCDMA. The joint venture has ensured the company has entered the market faster and competes fully with other giants like Apple Company.

RIM financial position and financial strategy

RIM according to Vuong 2008, in the Fortune 500 is the fastest growing company having a stable and growing financial base. For the third quarter of 2011, revenue grew 19% to stand at $5.49 bn from $4.62 bn the previous quarter. This is a 40% rise from the same quarter the previous fiscal year. Breaking down the revenue for the period are 82.0%, of devices 15.0% for service and 3.0% for software. For this period, the net income stood at $911.1 million compared to $796.7 million in the previous quarter and $628.4million in the same quarter the previous year (Dilger, 2009). All sorts of investments total cash as well as cash equivalent stood at $2.5bn this is as o0f 2010 November 2010. An examination of the company's short-terms and long-term assets as well as liabilities and equity shows that RIM heavily relies on equity for funding. Most of its assets are short-term. This means that RIM is interested in having in place a financial strategy that is short-term. RIM utilizes its own funds to finance assets.

Strategic positioning of RIM Company

The main identification that made the RIM Company to be outstanding in the market is the realization that it cannot offer only mobile enterprise software only. It realized that this software should be given to the market as a complete offer that can be used as a complete component in the market. Therefore, it had to ensure that the service that they were offering had to be given to the market through a mobile handset. It also succeeded in convincing the customers to sell the IT products and service. This ensured that the company remained a force to reckon with in the market arena in their pursuit of wireless email market. Initially, no other company offered such service as the competing companies as seven and Visto companies were not making handsets while Nokia never offered wireless email services.

These advantages made the company to grow very fast as the investors slammed in the company in the past years. It established itself by taking advantage of being sole suppliers of software devices in an immature market. It therefore established itself as a leader who was capable of raising their company very fast than other companies. However, the market has matured up very fast of recent soon and RIM is facing a stiff competition from various companies.

RIM marketing strategy

Marketing is an integral part of any company; it is a process of developing value and awareness of its products or services, as well as informing and communicating to potential end-users concerning what the organization has in store for them (Fortune Magazine. 2009). It also entails engaging consumers' relationships in order to attain the desired outcome. Organization's marketing strategy has been deemed the backbone of RIM company marketing plan. It has helped the company integrate the marketing goals, policies as well and tactics. The company has been ranked to be the fastest growing company globally recording an increase of 84% in profit and 77% increase in revenue in the last three years (Dilger, 2009). This is thanks to its marketing strategy that successfully blends the four marketing mix, pricing, advertising or promotion and distribution
The company uses B2C marketing strategy.

The company online strategies can sale goods to individual customers. Through the arrangement, customers are capable of buying the company's product via the internet or just make a call to the customer service for help, as they are need of formally buying a product. Similarly, developing of unique and quality product that is competitive in terms of prices is also used in marketing. Using low prices for its products also has been used to attract customers. This is driven by the notion that when prices for its products are low, and a relationship between the company and customers are in place, then it will be in a position to sell additional goods thereby increasing its margin. To successfully do marketing in a successful manner, the company does carry out research that is essential in decision making when it comes to making marketing decisions.