Question: Can you talk about RIM’s strategy for Taiwan and the Asia-Pacific market?
Norm Lo (勞偉強): Our strategy is to offer not just smartphones, but really to offer data solutions. We are not simply selling the phones. All we do is a cohesive strategy. We set up an architecture. So, we actually have a platformthat allows the ecosystem of the third party such as independent software application partners to really develop compellingapplications to support this business.
Yesterday [Monday], I had discussions with some software developers so that we could provide more localized platforms and services such as entertainment, gaming, social networking, location-based services and customer relationship management.
We are very interested in Taiwan. We want to develop an ecosystem here.
Q: RIM began selling Blackberry phones with a touch screen, code-named Storm, in the US and Europe, collaborating with telecom carriers Verizon Wireless and Vodafone last week. Since RIM is working well with Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大) in selling Blackberry phones here, when will the Storm hit the Taiwanese market?
Lo: We do not have a plan right now. But we intend to launch more Blackberry phones on our roadmap for Taiwan. We are actively working with our partners to make Storm available in more markets in upcoming months and into the next years.
Q: Nokia has cut its forecast for overall mobile phone shipments for this year and foresees a shipment decline next year, saying economic recession would result in slowing handset sales. Do you believe the deteriorating economy has hurt the industry?
Lo: Nokia is talking about the overall cellphone market. Things are slowing down. This macroeconomic slowdown is a global phenomenon and will affect everybody. That’s why we are extremely careful in terms of how we are managing this business for growth.
RIM’s business is solely in the fast-growing smartphone segment, which is a small portion of the cellphone market.
The Smartphone segment is going to grow faster than the rest of the cellphone market, but even the smartphone market is likely to slow down as well.
Generally speaking, obviously, it is a global slowdown. In terms of cellphones, I think what Nokia said is correct.
But in the smartphone subsector, there will be a lot of opportunities for growth.
Q: Is RIM going to outsource more production during the economic slump?
Lo: It is our prevailing strategy. We outsource manufacturing to our partners by and large.
We work with major global electronics manufacturing service partners. We have manufacturing partners in Latin America, Mexico and eastern Europe. We are actively looking at the Asia-Pacific [region] as well. RIM is now sourcing components in the region.
We also have our own manufacturing facilities at headquarters in Canada. It is very important to have manufacturing for early products to develop product samples and get into the manufacturing process.
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