Slashdot Mirror
RIM Struggles Continue
dave562 writes with news of continued difficulties for Research in Motion, who yesterday announced a drop in profits, product delays and layoffs, causing their stock to plunge over 20%. "Why did RIM experience delays? Because RIM recognized that the current hardware wasn't cutting it, and had to upgrade to more powerful chipsets, co-chief executive Mike Lazaridis said. The first will be the BlackBerry Bold 9900 that RIM recently showed off." An article at the Wall Street Journal speculates that the company needs to be taken over or broken apart. "RIM’s operating system could be an intriguing purchase for Hewlett-Packard, which now owns the lovely but unpopular Palm operating system for smart phones. Handset makers like Motorola might be lured to buy The Astonishing Tribe, a Swedish company RIM recently bought that designs snazzy interfaces for smart phones. Patent companies, Google or other tech companies could scoop up QNX, the software company behind the PlayBook tablet computer, and RIM’s BBM messaging platform."
Why does everything have to be open? the "built it yourself" PC market is a niche for geeks. Most computers sold now are laptops which may as well be made by the person selling you the OS as they're not built to any generic standard internally. So why aren't people complaining about the laptop market not being "open"?
RIM isn't dying because they have a bad product, they are dying because they are a phone associated with business and consumers wanting a personal phone don't want a phone from a stuffy business orientated vendor.
RIM had one or two killer ideas, Push Email and Remote Wipe. Both are commonplace elsewhere now, although Push Email tends to be done differently on non-RIM devices due to their patent.
RIM released a tablet computer that has none of their strengths in corporate phones, no email, no 3G connectivity and the usability was criticised too, O2 in the UK refuse to sell it for that reason.
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