Blackberry 2009 Annual Report Download - page 13

Download and view the complete annual report

Please find page 13 of the 2009 Blackberry annual report below. You can navigate through the pages in the report by either clicking on the pages listed below, or by using the keyword search tool below to find specific information within the annual report.

Page out of 92

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • 10
  • 11
  • 12
  • 13
  • 14
  • 15
  • 16
  • 17
  • 18
  • 19
  • 20
  • 21
  • 22
  • 23
  • 24
  • 25
  • 26
  • 27
  • 28
  • 29
  • 30
  • 31
  • 32
  • 33
  • 34
  • 35
  • 36
  • 37
  • 38
  • 39
  • 40
  • 41
  • 42
  • 43
  • 44
  • 45
  • 46
  • 47
  • 48
  • 49
  • 50
  • 51
  • 52
  • 53
  • 54
  • 55
  • 56
  • 57
  • 58
  • 59
  • 60
  • 61
  • 62
  • 63
  • 64
  • 65
  • 66
  • 67
  • 68
  • 69
  • 70
  • 71
  • 72
  • 73
  • 74
  • 75
  • 76
  • 77
  • 78
  • 79
  • 80
  • 81
  • 82
  • 83
  • 84
  • 85
  • 86
  • 87
  • 88
  • 89
  • 90
  • 91
  • 92

RIM continues to focus on scaling its R&D, manufacturing
and new product introduction capabilities. During the year
RIM opened two new R&D centers - one in Germany and one
in the United States - while also continuing to grow our Ca-
nadian presence. RIM’s R&D organization now has over 5,000
employees engaged in areas including advanced research,
product development, standards and licensing. In order to
support the growing demand for our products, we added sig-
nificant capacity to our manufacturing organization by adding
new outsourcing partners globally to increase flexibility and
scalability. In addition, we invested in the upgrade of certain
production and test equipment in our own manufacturing
facility to enable faster production. These efforts were instru-
mental in allowing RIM to ramp production quickly during the
fall in order to meet the strong demand generated by the new
product launches.
Another area of focus during the year was the development
of BlackBerry®EnterpriseServerversion5.0.Thisinitiative
involves a substantial effort from hundreds of engineers and
will provide enterprises and their IT departments with the most
scalable, manageable and reliable BlackBerry solution yet. We
are looking forward to launching the product in the coming
months.
BlackBerry in the Enterprise
The enterprise market continues to be very important to RIM’s
business and there are now over 175,000 organizations with
BlackBerryEnterpriseServerinstalledbehindthecorporate
firewall. RIM’s enterprise customer base is diversified with sig-
nificant growth in the past year coming from sectors including
Government,LawEnforcement,HealthCareandEducation.
The BlackBerry® Mobile Voice System (BlackBerry MVS) is
also beginning to gain traction as organizations look for ways
to leverage their existing BlackBerry Infrastructure to reduce
telecom costs. BlackBerry MVS enables BlackBerry smart-
phones to effectively become a mobile desk-phone, with one
phone number ringing all devices, a single voice mailbox to
manage, internal extension dialing capabilities, and added
benefits for IT departments that want better control of the
mobile phones in their organization. BlackBerry MVS can also
help enterprises reduce international calling costs by lever-
aging wireline calling rates. Rather than slowing the adoption
of BlackBerry MVS, the difficult economic times actually appear
to be accelerating interest in the platform due to its potential
for a compelling return on investment. Many organizations are
looking for ways to reduce costs and BlackBerry MVS is a good
tasitplugsintoexistingBlackBerryEnterpriseServerand
telecom infrastructures at very little incremental cost.
 BlackBerryEnterpriseServerversion5.0willbethemostsig-
nicantupgradetoBlackBerryEnterpriseServerinoverthree
years and, after many months of planning and testing at over
1,000betasites,BlackBerryEnterpriseServerv5.0willbeready
soon. This latest release delivers on several key corporate IT
imperatives, including increased manageability, lower total cost
of ownership, scalability, support for very large scale deploy-
ments and easy mobilization of hundreds of applications.
BlackBerryEnterpriseServer5.0willalsointroduceanumber
of highly desired user capabilities, including file sharing, the
ability to securely download files from the corporate network
and enhanced email management features including the ability
to create/delete/rename folders and assign flags to messages.
ThisisthemostpowerfulversionofBlackBerryEnterprise
Server ever and we believe it will further cement RIM’s leader-
ship position in the enterprise market.
BlackBerry Application Ecosystem
RIM continued to expand the BlackBerry developer community
and to enhance the platform to make it easier for our partners
to develop compelling BlackBerry applications. RIM works with
a broad range of developers, solution providers and system
integrators. Together these groups have already brought thou-
sands of BlackBerry applications and solutions to market and
we expect this number to significantly increase with the launch
of BlackBerry App World™. BlackBerry App World is an online
application storefront designed to help application developers
and carriers reach millions of BlackBerry smartphone users and
to provide consumers with greater choice, enhanced applica-
tion discovery and an easy method for managing the purchase,
installation and upgrades of mobile applications.
11
0
100
200
300
400
500
0
0
Carriers & Distribution Channels
Countries
20092008200720062005200420032002
Unprecedented Global Growth
BlackBerry presence