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Research In Motion (RIM), after a half decade in existence, reached the major milestone of signing up one million subscribers for its BlackBerry e-mail and data access solutions earlier this year. Ten months later, the wireless vendor eclipsed that record by notching up its second million users.

RIM Co-CEO & President Mike Lazaridis enthused, "This is a significant milestone, especially when you consider it took five years to establish the market and attract the first million BlackBerry users and less than ten months to double that number"

Although this news is impressive, it doesn't come as a complete surprise. Just last week, Gartner, which defines BlackBerries as wireless-handhelds and not smartphones, announced that RIM moved into third place in the handhelds behind palmOne and Hewlett-Packard—jumping from only 4.9 percent of the market last year to 19.8 percent this year. The analyst firm even predicts that RIM may overtake those companies next year, at least in the United States.

From Nowhere? Not Really
Few would have predicted last year that RIM would be in the position it is today. Yet over the course of these past ten months, RIM introduced several new and one particular innovative BlackBerry handheld, the 7100—a smartphone that nixes the traditional BlackBerrty thumb-keyboard and boxy design for something decidedly sleeker with a new keypad/keyboard combo that leverages predictive software to ease text input (see image).

RIM also aggressively pursued partnerships with carriers from around the world to expand into many new countries and channels. It seemed like every other week the company would announce its entry into a new market.

In addition, RIM revved up its licensing programs to deliver BlackBerry services to other device manufacturer's handhelds and smartphones, added support for Novell GroupWise to its enterprise server, and even previewed a new handheld for Wi-Fi networks.

While all of these developments are impressive, they don't fully explain how RIM could achieve in 10 months what had previously taken five years. According to IDC analyst David Linsalata, a confluence of additional factors contributed to the boost in RIM's fortunes.

Over the last couple of years, RIM moved away from the pager networks used for its original handhelds to cellular networks supported by wireless carriers. By gaining the support of mobile operators, RIM opened up a much larger potential market, with the power and brand recognition that came with partnering with carriers as an added bonus. This also allowed RIM to turn its handhelds from glorified pagers into full-fledged wireless-handhelds or smartphones.

It took time, but corporate America finally accepted wireless messaging (IM and e-mail) as something that could be good for business and not just a drain on the bottom line. As a result, enterprises that were in the process of testing wireless solutions in pilot programs decided mobile technology was worth their investment. This resulted in a lot more BlackBerry deployments than had been seen previously.

Future
The corporate market is the bread and butter of RIM's success. To expand further, it needs to attract more consumers and mobile professionals outside of the enterprise.

The new 7100 series may be a good start. But it faces stiff competition from the likes of palmOne's Treo series, which has done exceptionally well in the U.S., and other, cheaper, solutions, such as Danger/T-Mobile's Sidekick/hiptop devices.

Creative strategies Tim Bajarin views costs as the chief barrier to acceptance in these markets. To him, pricing must get to under 20 dollars a month to appeal to more types of users. Once it does, there is good potential for growth.

Road Block
A judge may rule soon as to whether RIM violated patents held by a company called NTP with its BlackBerry handhelds. This legal fight has been going on for several years. Should RIM lose, it may be forced to stop selling its wares in the U.S. A likelier scenario has NTP accepting a licensing fee from RIM, since it doesn't make a wireless handheld of its own.