Blackberry 2008 Annual Report Download - page 12

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saw aggressive promotion and pricing by our carrier partners that
resulted in 100% revenue growth over fiscal 2007. Our presence
in India also strengthened with the addition of two new carrier
partners. During fiscal 2008, we also announced a strategic part-
nership with Alcatel®-Lucent to sell BlackBerry smartphones in
Mainland China and launched the BlackBerry 8700 in the region
at the end of the year.
Throughout the calendar 2007 holiday season our carrier and
distribution partners marketed BlackBerry smartphones as part
of their mainstream consumer offerings. Many of our partners
offered promotions and special pricing programs for BlackBerry
smartphones around this time, resulting in record-setting net sub-
scriber account additions on “Black Friday” of the US Thanksgiv-
ing weekend. We were also pleased to see this strength continue
throughout the season.
Business and Government
While the demand for the BlackBerry solution remains strong in
our traditional enterprise markets, we continue to see diversifi-
cation in our customer base across many smaller business and
government segments. In support of this trend, we introduced
BlackBerry® Professional Software, a new wireless solution for
small and medium sized organizations that delivers enterprise-
grade security and controls in a streamlined and affordable pack-
age optimized for smaller deployments.
We are also seeing great interest in the BlackBerry® Mobile
Voice System (BlackBerry MVS), which provides enterprise us-
ers with single-number reachability and seamless access to the
corporate phone system. We believe this intuitive and integrated
approach to fixed mobile convergence and unified messaging of-
fers significant strategic value to corporate customers while also
enabling a strong return on investment.
Consumers
During the year, we added a range of new consumer-friendly
features and underlying technologies to strengthen RIM’s posi-
tion in new market segments. The BlackBerry® Internet Service
was improved with advanced features and greater ease-of-use.
New smartphones were introduced with communications and
multimedia enhancements, including the BlackBerry Pearl 8130
smartphone for CDMA networks and the BlackBerry Pearl 8120
smartphone with Wi-Fi and UMA support. We also announced
plans to introduce BlackBerry® Unite!™, a free PC-based software
product that allows small groups of people, such as a family or
small office, to stay connected on the go with mobile access to
shared calendars, pictures, music, documents and other desktop
content, as well as wireless email and web browsing.
BlackBerry Application Ecosystem
The BlackBerry platform is an open platform that supports indus-
try standards and simplifies the development of mobile applica-
tions. We now have hundreds of independent software vendors,
solution providers and system integrators in our global BlackBerry
Alliance Program and they have already brought thousands of
BlackBerry applications and solutions to market.
BlackBerry Alliance Program members have developed new
software applications for a wide range of purposes, including
mapping and navigation, mobile information services, games,
personal wellness and music services. Two major mobility trends
seen this year were GPS-based applications and social networking
applications. As the popularity of these applications grow around
the world, we are working with partners to mobilize these ap-
plications and enable a streamlined experience that leverages
the advantages of the unique push-based BlackBerry platform.
We are pleased to have recently announced that downloads of
the Facebook® for BlackBerry® Smartphones application have
surpassed the 1,000,000 mark.
Of course, the market for wireless enterprise applications also
continues to thrive as businesses and governments continue to
embrace wireless applications and systems integration as part of
their IT strategies for both operational improvements and com-
petitive advantage.
In support of the growing BlackBerry development community,
RIM is providing easy-to-use tools. In fiscal 2008, we launched
the BlackBerry® Plug-in for Microsoft® Visual Studio® 1.0 and
BlackBerry® Java® Development Environment (BlackBerry JDE)
4.3.0;andsubsequenttoyearend,welaunchedtheBlackBerry
JDE for Eclipse™ 1.0.
Sales, Marketing & Distribution
At the end of fiscal 2008, BlackBerry smartphones were available
in 135 countries through over 350 carriers and channels. RIM
has successfully managed its global expansion and distribution
through the development of strong channel partnerships. We
work closely with our partners to provide marketing, training
and support services. The synergies created by our tight rela-
tionships facilitate more efficient product launches and better
customer care.
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