RIM Faces An Uphill Battle For Mainstream Enterprise Mobility In Japan

Canada's Research In Motion (RIM) entered the nascent Japanese enterprise mobility market in September 2006, when it began to offer the BlackBerry through a single carrier partner, NTT DoCoMo. However, delays in offering Japanese text input and the lack of perceived benefits make the BlackBerry unattractive to mainstream end users in firms. When Japanese text input becomes available in the second quarter of 2007, RIM's best opportunity will be to promote the BlackBerry to corporate IT divisions seeking to ensure data security. But RIM is arriving too late to dominate in a market fragmented by rival solutions.