BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion is a victim of its own success. Having dominated the market for corporate e-mail devices for years, it is being forced to seek out growth in consumer markets, where, so far, it has had trouble differentiating its products.

Going mainstream has helped vastly expand its consumer base -- which now represents half of all BlackBerry subscribers. Fully 80 percent of its new subscribers now come from outside its traditional corporate base.

But that success is coming at a growing cost to the once lofty average selling price of its phones, the latest quarterly results show. Profits for its second fiscal quarter dipped 3.5 percent, amid weak subscriber growth. Product prices appear under pressure at both ends of its business, both among corporate users and with consumers.

Fixing these issues will take time, several quarters at least, something which investors who have bid the stock up more than 100 percent in the past year were not prepared to hear: they sent RIM stock tumbling 17 percent, to below $70, on Friday.

The trouble is that RIM must develop and introduce new products that can recapture customer attention in increasingly crowded markets. Phone companies must be convinced to sell the new BlackBerrys in their stores. Consumers must get the message. Rivals have to be kept at bay.

And RIM no longer has the luxury of retreating to its corporate base. There has been a proliferation of rival devices from the Apple iPhone to newer phones from HTC and Motorola based on Google's Android operating system, all of which now offer customers secure access to Microsoft Exchange e-mail and contacts.

The company is desperate for a hot new product to replace its three-year-old Pearl phone, its first device to make a splash in consumer markets. Its standout keyboard for text input is less special than it once was. Rival mobile phone makers offer better cameras, more memory and a wider selection of zippy software for their devices.

But Research In Motion has a plan that involves more than just waiting for the global economy to recover.

A solid step in that direction is the new low-cost Curve, which offers many of the features found in pricier smartphones. It has seen early success in the United States and Europe convincing phone operators to market it to teenagers. This mass-market device is an example of RIM's land-grab strategy in action. It won't improve RIM's finances any time soon, but the goal here appears to be market share.

Rather than trying to always be first to lead with cool new features, RIM's contrarian theory is that by building products that handle data more efficiently, they are more likely to become the preferred devices sold by network operators. It's akin to the strategy that made BlackBerry so popular with corporate technology managers.

Another part of its strategy, no doubt egged on by the success of the iPhone, is to improve not just how its phones make use of the Web, but the basic software that defines what users see and do on BlackBerrys, says Ben Wood, a mobile device analyst with UK-based CCS Insight. Toward this end, RIM acquired Torch Mobile, the maker of an innovative Web browser for mobile phones, in August.

The problem is that -- in a bid to grab market share from rivals like Apple and Nokia -- RIM says it must accept far lower average selling prices on its phones than when it was known mainly as the preferred supplier of secure corporate email.

This strategy will take time -- not a few quarters, but years to play out. RIM effectively is asking investors to have faith that it can repeat its miraculous rise in the corporate e-mail market, only this time in fickle consumer ones.

You can read some of Eric's recent colums here. 

(Photo credit: Reuters/Mike Cassese)

How many times have you smacked your forehead in frustration after sending a bawdy e-mail to your boss that had been meant for a friend?

Until now, there had been no way to retrieve the missive. Even if the person’s on vacation, it’s only a matter of time before - as the saying goes - your nether region is grass. Enter Google’s Gmail Labs and “Undo Send”. If you enable the feature, every time you hit ‘send’, a button allowing you to ‘undo’ the send will pop up along with confirmation that the e-mail has been sent. You have five seconds to decide.

Etiquette hounds coach you to leave the “to” blank while you write an e-mail (especially if it’s a subject you feel strongly about) and not forward an e-mail without permission. As author and business consultant Tim Sanders says, “you never need to send an e-mail that’s regrettable.” But it happens all the time.

With Google’s snazzy new tool, if you click “undo”, the message is brought back to the first, “compose” screen. But it hasn’t won over everyone.

“That’s a really small window,” said Sanders, who was part of a May 2006 study on how people use e-mail. The study, which included 16,000 people, in part examined which e-mail messages were regrettable and why. “We make a lot of mistakes over e-mail that sabotage our lives,” Sanders said. “You’d need [the waiting period to be] a day to really prevent yourself from making mistakes.”

If you feel the same way and want, say, a drop-down menu where you can set the amount of time you want the undo option to last, let Gmail Labs know by sending them feedback. You’d be building a delay into a technology that is prized for its speediness, but it might save you your job.

These are just the sort of tricks that are increasing Google’s market share. Google saw a 32 percent worldwide increase in unique visitors to its Web sites last year, according to comScore. The total number of visitors topped 775 million - compared to Microsoft’s 20 percent increase to 647 million visitors and Yahoo’s 16 percent increase to 562.6 million visitors

Analysts say some of that growth is because of new features put out by Gmail Labs. At this point Gmail Labs only works with Internet Explorer 7.0+, Firefox 2.0+, Safari 3.0+ and Google Chrome.

– Reporting by Clare Baldwin

Google’s at it again.

The Web search leader edged into Skype’s territory at on Tuesday with a feature that allows multitasking Gmail users to video chat, IM and email all at the same time.

Gmail and Google App subscribers can now gossip with friends or coworkers on a high-quality video screen and simultaneously instant message them in a Google Chat box.  The video screen can be popped out of the chat box and moved around a user’s computer screen.

Check out this YouTube video with Google engineer Serge Lachapelle to see how it works. A team of Googlers in Seattle, Sweden and Silicon Valley collaborated on the new app, which is available for both PC and Mac users.

All you need is a webcam and this web browser plug-in to start chatting. And for those who don’t have a webcam, you’ll still be able to chat with friends by voice.

The video feature will help businesses get things done more efficiently (and cheaply, too) by allowing “face-to-face collaboration among employees” and also help “cut travel and IT expenses,” Google said Tuesday.

But it’s also for ideal for anyone who wants to chat and socialize with people not in the same room.

Although Google launched the video and voice chat feature today, it’s still being rolled out on Macs and PCs internationally this week, so it may take longer for others to be able to access the plug-in.

For those who have already downloaded the video and voice chat, does it work as great and as seamless as it seems?

– Reporting by Jennifer Martinez

“Beer goggles” can make you do things you may later deeply regret but Gmail hopes its new “Mail Goggles” will ensure that sending embarassing emails isn’t one of them.

The feature, rolled out this week by Google, requires users to solve a few timed math problems after they click the “send” button, to verify they are “in the right state of mind” to send that late-night missive.

In its default setting, Mail Goggles is active only late on weekend nights “as that is the time you’re most likely to need it,” but can be activated at other times as well, Gmail engineer Jon Perlow said in a posting on the Official Gmail Blog.

Perlow said he designed Mail Goggles to spare others the pain inflicted by messages that should never have seen the sober light of day — that desperate love letter to your ex, or the brilliant riposte telling the whole office what you really think of your boss.