INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS

Economic & Political Environment for International Business

Economic & Political Environment for International Business

Introduction

The technology scene in the world is a bubble which will not blast any time soon. The most talked about technology company in the world as of today is Apple. The adoption of technology has never been so fast for any product than it is for smart phones. It would not be wrong to say that tens of thousands of users download software apps every hour. This is also coupled with the growth in the usage of computers. The touch screen IBM Simon was introduced by BellSouth back in the year 1993. However, the real smart phone thing started in the year 2002 with the introduction of PDAs (Mobile Squared, 2012, p. 5). This same year the Canadian company Research in Motion popularly known as Rim floated their first BlackBerry with phone features never heard of before. Pocket PCs and mobile GPRS were also a very warmly welcomed addition.

However, the whole smart phone scene was taken over by Apple with the launch of iPhone. This phone was received very well by the US market and the trend set by the empire of note was later adopted by other countries around the world. Before this, the adoption of smart phones was pretty fast but was still slower when compared with the adoption of radios when they first came in and the adoption of personal computers. Year over year the revenues for smart phone companies have doubled. Majority of all mobile phone sales in the US and UK comprise of smart phones. However, the latest technology trends also show that this growth which has remained fairly stable for the part many years has also come to a halt in the current years. The paper discusses the threats and opportunities to RIM products with technological changes in the present environment, impact of the current economic global crisis upon the operations of RIM, and the future development of RIM in context to contemporary cultural and social changes.

Technological changes in the present environment

Being a technology oriented company calls for staying ahead of the competition through keeping tabs on the changes in the external environment. RIM is also a company that is pressed to embed innovation and creativity in the very culture of the organization. Before discussing the opportunities and threats to RIM products from the external environment, it is first imperative to study the technological mistakes that the company has made in the past and the feathers it has in its cap.

RIM is the pioneer in the corporate emails category. The personalization and the security it offered at the time of its inception were awe-inspiring as there was non-substitute for the feature. The other systems were more open and were not as reliable. This became the winning proposition for Rim at the time (Henderson, 2012, hp. 12). However, when Apple came into the market and people started downloading tens of thousands of apps on their phones, the corporate email was given ...