Sunil Dutt’s exit may dampen BlackBerry’s prospects in India
First Published: Sat, Mar 09 2013. 12 06 AM IST
Sunil Dutt had joined Canadian smartphone maker BlackBerry in 2011. Photo: Hemant Mishra/Mint
Updated: Sun, Mar 10 2013. 11 27 PM IST
RIM, now renamed BlackBerry, was beginning to demonstrate
a renewed vigour, both globally and in India, with the launch of its
touch-based Z10 handset last month.
Until a new head is named,
Rick Costanzo,
executive vice-president for global sales, will lead the team in
India—“an extremely important market for BlackBerry”, a company
spokesman said. “Our aim is to continue to build on our recent momentum
with the launch of BlackBerry 10.”
Dutt, who resigned after just 14 months at the top, on
Saturday declined to reveal his plans immediately saying he had signed a
non-disclosure agreement with a “new company” earlier in the day. “I
had to move on since I cannot put my feet in two boats,” he said, adding
his decision had nothing to do with the performance of the Z10.
“This is bad news for BlackBerry. They could have used
someone as Dutt at this stage to consolidate their strong brand equity
in India and to spread their distribution far and wide for Z10 and other
BB10 devices,” said
Jayanth Kolla, partner at research firm Convergence Catalyst.
BlackBerry’s smartphone market share in India fell from
around 15% in 2011 to less than 8% in 2012, Convergence Catalyst
estimates.
RIM shipped about 5.5 million smartphones to India
between January and July 2012, accounting for 12.1% of such shipments to
the country, compared with
Samsung Electronics (India) Pvt. Ltd’s 41.6% share and
Nokia India Pvt. Ltd’s 19.2%, according to a report in October by CyberMedia Research.
Dutt, an industry veteran, was instrumental in setting up the distribution networks of Finnish mobile maker
Nokia as well as South Korean electronics company
Samsung in India.
Dutt was sales director at Nokia from 2002 to 2007 before
he moved to Samsung as country head until 2009. Before joining
BlackBerry in December 2011, he worked as president, personal systems
group, at
Hewlett-Packard India Sales Pvt. Ltd.
Dutt said the Z10 is doing well in India. “In fact, its
success is something that spurred me to take the decision of moving out
since the company is in the hands of an able team,” he said.
Though priced at
Rs.43,490,
“corporate customers have shown a lot of interest for the new model of
BlackBerry—the Z10—and we are looking into the enquiries,” said
K. Jaishankar, managing director of
Ingram Micro India Pvt. Ltd, a distributor of BlackBerry and other smartphones. He did not share specific numbers.
Analysts expect the Indian smartphone segment to see high
activity this year as the new BlackBerry 10 devices begin jostling for
share in an Android-dominated market.
In a media briefing in Waterloo, Canada, on 13 February,
Thorsten Heins,
president and chief executive of BlackBerry, said the Z10 and Q10 (a
Qwerty-based model that’s yet to be launched) smartphones “will help
resurrect the company’s fortunes”.
“Our 80 million subscribers want us to be successful and
this new platform (BB10) will help us do so by making us a leader in the
mobile computing segment...India is one of our very important growth
markets,” he said
ADITYA KUMAR SINGH
PGDM 2 SEM
