Blackberry 2004 Annual Report Download - page 9

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Investing in the infrastructure that supports BlackBerry is a key focus for RIM. We are building redundancies
and high levels of fault tolerance into the system, as well as the structures and facilities necessary to maintain
BlackBerry services in times of crisis or disaster. Last August, BlackBerry messages continued to be delivered
throughout the East Coast blackout when other communications services were unavailable or overloaded.
BlackBerry customers had a distinct advantage in being able to keep in touch with their business associates
and loved ones during the uncertainty associated with the event. This “Always On” availability is what our
customers have come to expect from BlackBerry.
BlackBerry Web ClientTM
During fiscal 2004 many carrier partners launched BlackBerry service targeted at the high-end or professional
consumer. One of the corporate goals we set out last year was to enter this market, and we have seen
remarkable success with this offering in the past twelve months. BlackBerry Web Client (BWC) is our solution
that enables customers to experience BlackBerry without the need for a corporate server, and allows users’ to
provision the service themselves directly from the point of purchase. We continue to believe that there is a
large market opportunity for BlackBerry in the “prosumer” market segment and we plan to further innovate
through developments such as one-click provisioning and new handhelds.
Customer Care and Technical Support
Providing first-rate customer service has always been a key area of focus for RIM. As we transitioned our
business over the past three years from a direct to indirect sales model whereby we sell BlackBerry primarily
through our carrier partners, a number of large enterprise customers have desired to maintain their strong
technical support relationship with RIM. To meet the needs of these customers RIM has launched TSupport,
our Technical Support Services program, which includes a suite of annual technical and software maintenance
programs. Support is provided for all BlackBerry software in any of five service levels to meet the needs of
BlackBerry enterprise users. This program is beginning to generate meaningful revenues and we plan to focus
on further growing this aspect of our business in the coming year.
BlackBerry Connect
Several new BlackBerry Connect relationships have been forged including those with industry leading
companies such as Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications and Samsung Electronics. Our BlackBerry Connect
partners are also making progress in introducing BlackBerry enabled handsets into the market. At recent
industry trade shows, both Nokia and High Tech Computer Corporation (HTC) have demonstrated working
prototypes of their handsets enabled with BlackBerry. Throughout fiscal 2005, we will continue to focus on
adding new licensees and assisting our partners in getting BlackBerry enabled handsets to market.
Product Development and Manufacturing
Manufacturing capacity doubled during fiscal 2004 and our manufacturing facility is now equipped to produce
approximately 3 million handhelds per year. In addition, we are working with outsourcing partners to provide
both site redundancy and to increase manufacturing flexibility. During fiscal 2005, we expect to move a
portion of RIM’s manufacturing processes to external third parties. In the past year, we have also made
strategic purchases of key components to ensure sufficient supply of long lead-time components and we
remain extremely focused on building and maintaining strong supplier relationships.
Our Research and Development (R&D) teams continue to innovate and develop future generations of products
and technologies and to aggressively grow RIM’s intellectual property rights portfolio through the filing of patents
on our technologies. In the past year a number of new products were launched including the BlackBerry 7510TM