I am making myself available to fill in the shoes of RIM CEO’s for one day. Here’s what I would do:
I would drop the development of the QNX OS and all related systems. The following would be bad for me as a customer, but it makes all sense for RIM. Just fork the Android source tree into a new distribution (but keep updating with upstream) and focus on what RIM is known for:
- Security.
- Make storage and communication encrypted.
- Replace google’s services (Gmail, Google Calendar, …) with RIM’s services, and allow for companies to host them.
- Make Storage automatically backed up on the RIM/Hosted cloud. Even better: make shared folders like dropbox. Everything encrypted again.
- Administrative tasks
- Give admins great tools to manage hundreds of blackberrydroids easily.
- Create a BBAppStore in which apps must be signed by RIM and must follow some standards like encryption, no external communication, etc… (Apps would not be bought individually for $0.99, but rather in bulk for several android terminals at once)
- Communication
- Make the phones a really damn good email machine. Add a physical keyboard, improve the UI, but make email really easy on the phone. Just like IM.
- Integrate VOIP really well as if there was no difference between the GSM and VOIP/Skype whatever. This would be a major selling point for companies.
- Office Integration
- Develop great office suite apps (Word, Excel, Calendar, Mail)
- Make a great printer (or adapter) that makes printing Documents really easy.
- Same for scanning. Maybe using the camera and OCR.
- Integrate well with a projector. People should be able to present with a tablet/phone and no cables.