RIM wants to be Asia’s top smartphone vendor

So here we are at the BlackBerry DEVCON Asia at the Westin Hotels and Resort In Nusa Dua, Bali. The PlayBook was demo-ed publicly for the first time in the region in a presentation by RIM’s Southeast Asia chief, Gregory Wade.

There were also a a number of other announcements regarding the PlayBook, PlayBook SDK and the upcoming BlackBerry OS 6.1. when RIM executives took to the stage for a series of keynote speeches on Thursday morning.

Here are the highlights:

Playbook demo: Wade gave an overview of what the two-day conference brings and how the company sees the Asian market all while using the PlayBook as his presentation guide. It was the first time the PlayBook made its public appearance in the region.

Huge turnout of Indonesians at the DEVCON: Although there are over 700 attendees at DEVCON, 60 percent are Indonesians, according to Arief Rakhmadani, who is in charge of RIM’s social media activities in the country. That’s a pretty enthusiastic response from the local contingent.

RIM fights piracy with special warranty in Indonesia: Wade remarked that RIM introduced a 24-month warranty for the Bold 9700 in Indonesia to encourage consumers to purchase authorized devices as opposed to gray market imports as part of the company’s “Peace of Mind” initiative. It was also the device’s first launch outside North America, again underlining Indonesia’s importance to RIM.

RIM is Southeast Asia’s no. 2 smartphone vendor: Wade also pointed out that RIM had become the number 2 smartphone vendor in Southeast Asia according to IDC in November last year. In Indonesia, the Blackberry PIN had become a social connector and features prominently on many business cards. The company is also confident that it will overtake Nokia and jump one spot to become the top smartphone vendor in Asia before the end of the year.

App World trumps Android Market regionally: In much of Southeast Asia consumers are apparently more familiar with the App World than the Android Market. While social networking apps top the App World list regionally, in Indonesia, the second ranked class of apps are general search apps. In Malaysia it’s communications, while in Thailand it’s games.

Asia is the future for smartphones: In terms of opportunities, the company sees 54% growth in the Asia Pacific smartphone market by 2015 and 39% of smartphone shipments will be to Asia.

RIM’s strategic shift away from smartphones: RIM’s VP of Global Alliances Tyler Lessard announced that RIM no longer sees itself as a smartphone maker. Instead, it’s a mobile computing company. This is clearly in light of the PlayBook and the QNX software that powers that tablet as well as future BlackBerry handsets.

Focus on the tablet: The PlayBook may yet play a significant part of RIM’s future as the market moves towards tablet computing from the netbook category. To Wade, tablets may not necessarily replace notebooks but instead becoming the first computing experience as many new consumers may be exposed to tablets long before they see traditional computers or notebooks.

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