Research In Motion Ltd (BBRY), BlackBerry: Can the Smartphone Underdog Pull Off an Upset?

Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)

In partnership with Samsung and more other device makers than I care to count, Google has quietly attained a really dominant position in the smartphone market. By focusing on building the software (and providing a platform for selling apps) the tech giant has pursued a low-risk, high reward strategy. Making it open source gives the company serious street-cred for the geek community (no disrespect … I’m one of them) and pushes against the concept of closed off, secretive tech firms. Still, without being a big hardware maker, it’s tough to know how well it can push back against Research In Motion Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY)’s current charm offensive.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)

Here we come to the real competition. Microsoft wants BlackBerry to go away. The firm is heavily invested in its mobile device push with the Windows 8 phone and the Surface tablet (and with making MS-Office a cloud-based subscription service) and doesn’t need someone else trying to grab the spotlight and market share that it feels it should have. I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft placed a lot of muscle into trying to lock up enterprise-level customers for the Windows 8 phone to shut out BlackBerry. The firm has the money and the professional skills to give BlackBerry real trouble in 2013.

Still, I think the chance for Research In Motion Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) to pull of a Harvard-like upset with the Z10 and other new products as reasonably good. The product is getting good reviews, the media is doing the device great favors in relentlessly covering it with praise, and its own set of available apps (long thought to be a weakness) has just passed the 100,000 available threshold. All of those things occurring together give BlackBerry a real chance to place itself back in the serious contender zone. That’s a long way from a Cinderella story (Harvard would need two more wins to get there, and BlackBerry would need to hit a market share of 20%), but it’s a solid start. I’m going to be interested to see how it turns out.

The article BlackBerry: Can the Smartphone Underdog Pull Off an Upset? originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Nate Wooley.

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