Research In Motion Ltd (BBRY): Heins Sees Dominance in 7 Years

Research In Motion Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) does not seem to have the appearance of a dominant mobile device company right now. In a couple of the latest surveys of smartphone market share, BlackBerry has fallen behind Windows Phone as the No. 3 operating system in the smartphone market – which is kinda like saying you’re the third-best sand volleyball player on your team when the team only has two players on the court.  Not exactly going to get much playing time, eh?

However,  Research In Motion Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) CEO Thorsten Heins has a grand vision for BlackBerry over the next five to seven years, he says, which could provide an opportunity for mobile computing dominance. Yes, the guy who allegedly predicted the demise of the tablet  computer in five years (which we covered before, as a comment that was simplified) is the same guy who is predicting mobile dominance by BlackBerry by the end of this decade.

Note how carefully he chooses his words. He doesn’t say smartphones, or tablets, when he spoke at BlackBerry Live this week. “I’m not just looking at the smartphone market.,” said the head of Research In Motion Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY). “The smartphone, to me, is a stepping stone towards real mobile computing … I’m fully, fully convinced of the mobile computing paradigm. It’s going to come five to seven years from now; we will have a totally different world of how we use these devices. This is where I want to dominate.”

When your company is only catching about 3 percent of the smartphone market and has fallen behind more and more as quarters pass, it might make sense for Heins to talk beyond the smartphone market. But what he is referring to is inside-baseball kind of stuff; he sees mobile going to a whole other level where it is being embedded in devices that already exist. Can you imagine common household appliances or cars all connected by sharing an Internet-based platform? Interestingly, Research In Motion Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) BlackBerry 10 operating system is based on QNX, which is an operating platform that BlackBerry owns, which is estimated to be already used in 60 percent of all automobiles that use advanced computerization and entertainment.

And with Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) talking with Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) in regards to autopilot technology, could it make logical sense, then, to have Research In Motion Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) involved in those discussions as well? What do you think about the future evolution of mobile computing? Might Heins be onto something? And could BlackBerry already be positioned for this evolution? Let us know in the comments section below.

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