On March 28, 2012 RIM has announced a steep cut in the price of its products in India. The prices of four of its models (three from the curve series and one from the Torch series) were cut on an average by 26 percent immediately. These four handsets comprised 60 percent of RIM’s total business in India. RIM was looking to garner a higher market share through the price cuts in the world’s second biggest and highly competitive Indian mobile market. The announcement of a steep price cut was seen by the analysts as a sudden change in the strategy for RIM in India. RIM’s products were traditionally priced premium and targeted at the corporate consumers. 
Sunil Dutt, MD, RIM India, says that more price cuts to entice new customers could not be sidelined.
While the enterprise market still dominated the RIM’s business in India, RIM hoped of giving 50-50 focus to both consumer and enterprise markets through more affordable handsets through price cuts. They were not affordable for the regular consumers. Following stiff competition in the smart phone market and the resulting loss of its global market share, RIM started to focus at the generally consumer market to increase its market reach.
The change in RIM’s strategy and the introduction of more handsets with touch screens and better multimedia features attracted more young customers like college students towards RIM. RIM hoped of using the price cut to put its handsets in the hands of more number of consumers. Commenting on the price cut, Sunil Dutt, RIM’s India Managing Director said: “RIM as a brand has moved from just an enterprise device to as a more consumer device. Be it our services or the product, we have seen a strong uptake by the youth and therefore, to get the devices into more hands, we are cutting the prices.” The previous cut in the prices of its BlackBerry messenger service led more youth adopting the BlackBerry phones. RIM has also cut the price of its tablet, PlayBook in December 2011 which increased its market share to 21 percent in India. RIM hoped that the present cut in the prices of its handsets would yield similar results to it. And India was one of the few markets where the market share of RIM was still growing where as its global market share has been falling steeply due to increased competition from Apple and Google. RIM still had a 15 percent market share in the Indian smart phone market next to Nokia and Samsung.
Another important reason for the price cut was the delay in the launch of its new BBX platform for BlackBerry smart phones. In January, 2012 RIM has announced that it may not be able to release its mobile platform till the end of 2012. The existing platform of RIM for its mobile phones was not able to effectively compete against the new rival platforms globally. Many analysts believed that this could severely hamper the chances for any revival in RIM’s performance. RIM hoped of halting exodus of its current customers in still crucial and growing markets like India to rival mobile platforms like iOS and Android for the time being through the price cuts.
Via: The Times of India