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."

Comments

No more

[Anonymous Coward]

RIM jobs

Re:No more

[Anonymous Coward]

When is the last time you have used blackberry phone ?

Re:No more

[hawguy]

When is the last time you have used blackberry phone ?

2 minutes ago.

The blackberry is still far superior for Exchange email and calendaring than any Android or iPhone device that I've tried.

Several execs in my company tried to move to shiny new iPhones, but all of them came back to Blackberries. Well, some carry both a BB and iPhone.

Re:No more

[ColdWetDog]

The blackberry is still far superior for Exchange email and calendaring than any Android or iPhone device that I've tried..

That's the problem. They're great at that and not much else. iPhones and Androids are good at email and good at a whole bunch of things. I guess the market for really hardcore email / Exchange integration isn't all that big.

Re:No more

[tom17]

That's funny, 2 minutes ago here, but I detest it. Hate it hate it hate it.

I find my google calendar on my HTC Desire much nicer.

Sure, the exchange stuff is great for work, but that's it.

If RIM goes bust, maybe they will take the damn thing away! \o/

Re:No more

[Anonymous Coward]

Disclaimer: I'm a RIM employee.

We're not worried. We pulled in $700mil in profit last quarter. The market somehow believes that we're going out of business as a result. Our market cap is now less than our annual revenue. What kind of sense does that make?

Sure the product needs some work. If you think we're sitting idly on our hands, your wrong. But we're not exactly losing money, and we're a company with no debt and a $3B pile of cash. This stock market mess has made us an _amazing_ acquisition target, but we're nowhere near closing our doors.

Re:No more

[Anonymous Coward]

if youre not worried you should be. you could say the same for nokia and look what that turd is doing. and BTW what the fuck were you guys thinking with the playbook ? throw out your turd of an OS and put your stuff on android. you dont know how to code -- get over it.

Re:No more

[MightyMartian]

I'd be worried if I were you. RIM's market share is being eaten into like crazy by Apple and all the 'Droids. I know of two medium sized companies in the last nine months who have dropped Blackberries for iPhones. I think the tide has turned.

Re:No more

[milkmage]

um.. do you still have a job? I mean.. with layoffs and all.

Re:No more

[slasher999]

OS/2 was superior to Windows of the time, Beta was superior to VHS, MCA was superior to ISA. All of those superior products died too.

Re:No more

[Bert64]

And very poor support for anything other than exchange...
I've used them at work, and not been terribly impressed... The requirement to run a separate proprietary server for blackberry, the need to use their own custom APNs, not being able to add more than one account, no support for imap/caldav/carddav/etc...
And email is their best feature, web browsing is pretty lousy, media support pretty poor, they are fairly mediocre voice handsets (especially with the tiny number keys for typing phone numbers)...
I personally find the iphone email client much better than the blackberry one too (i carry one of each, iphone for personal use and blackberry for work).

Re:No more

[ICLKennyG]

That's what Nokia said.

Woopdie do, you pulled in $700m in profit last quarter. Your competitors pulled in $6B and $2.3B (Apple and Google). They are eating your market share faster every day. Further, with increased pressure from IT managers to reduce infrastructure, your model of dedicated support hardware just doesn't make sense anymore. Keep fighting the good fight, but the market is reacting not to your current performance but to your future prospects.
You lost 5% of market share of new phone sales(30%-25%), and your market share dipped to 8.2 from 8.6 from just January to April. Apple is raking in the cash on their devices and you guys were there first.

Re:No more

[vux984]

no support for imap/caldav/carddav/etc...

We have dozens of them where I work... most of them are using IMAP to access Google Apps Enterprise accounts. At least half of them have other email accounts set up as well.

Perhaps you found them so restrictive because of the policies IT had in place. Because at least half the stuff you are complaining about they do in fact do.

As for the iphone vs bb... i have an iphone, and for me its the right device. But the bb keyboard is FAR better for composing anything of any length than the touch only iphone.

I don't give a crap about 'apps' or 'games', but i do like the iphones contact manager and web browser better.

Media support I find irrelevant; I use my phone too much for productivity to waste battery listening to music on it... but I do find the iphone camera pretty dismal compared to most other phones.

Re:No more

[grub]

If you think we're sitting idly on our hands, your wrong

I didn't know Lazaridis had a /. account.

Re:No more

[Anonymous Coward]

You shouldn't be asserting what anyone should be thinking with that kind of spelling. Since you seem to be having great trouble with very simple things, let me patch up you're spelling until you can get back to the first grade.

What you typed:

Sure the product needs some work. If you think we're sitting idly on our hands, your wrong. But we're not exactly losing money,[...]

Corrected version:

Sure the product needs some work. If you think we're sitting idly on our hands, you're wrong. But we're not exactly losing money,[...]

Re:No more

[hawguy]

The blackberry is still far superior for Exchange email and calendaring than any Android or iPhone device that I've tried..

That's the problem. They're great at that and not much else. iPhones and Androids are good at email and good at a whole bunch of things. I guess the market for really hardcore email / Exchange integration isn't all that big.

Yeah, I agree, my BB is great at email, but not so great at just about anything else (except SSH). I carry an Android for personal use and rarely use my Blackberry outside of business hours.

Re:No more

[Man On Pink Corner]

As a RIM employee, you need to read this guy's thoughts on your company and its future. ("What's wrong with Blackberry...").

Now. No -- now as in right now.

Because right now, you're in a world of shit, regardless of what those balance statements are telling you.

Re:No more

[brantondaveperson]

OS/2 had no applications.

Beta tapes were 1 hour long (longer ones later, but it was too late by then). Plus they wore out faster.

MCA was a closed standard, ISA open.

There's always more to the equation than simple technical superiority.

Re:No more

[chill]

U.S. Government is a big buyer of Blackberries. See the recent article here on Slashdot about gov't gadgets for numbers. They're a big chunk of your profit. And as soon as the iPhone or Android gets FIPS certified you will lose most of your U.S. Government business overnight.

Right now, most of the people I know in gov't use Blackberries only because they're forced to. Not a week goes by where I don't have users asking me when they can use their iPhone, iPad or Android device and return the BB.

We're piloting iPads and Samsung Android tablets now.

Oh, and thanks for making the BES compatible with iOS and Android devices. That'll smooth our transition when we dump your crap.

Re:No more

[DaScribbler]

Disclaimer: I'm a RIM employee.

We're not worried. We pulled in $700mil in profit last quarter. The market somehow believes that we're going out of business as a result. Our market cap is now less than our annual revenue. What kind of sense does that make?

Yeah well, when your company's revenue was up 15% over the same quarter last year, and net profit is down 10% from the same quarter last year... that's not something you'd want to draw attention to. $700mil may look like a large number on the surface, but it's actually much smaller than it should have been.

Re:No more

[afidel]

My Evo Shift is actually superior to the BB for email IMHO, it has better attachment support and the conversation view is great (mass deleting messages from our monitoring systems was a PITA on the BB because delete prior wouldn't delete on the server).

Re:No more

[scottbomb]

About an hour ago. I'll be upgrading to another one next month. Blackberry isn't very popular on /. but there are still plenty of us who use them.

Re:No more

[theshowmecanuck]

I find my google calendar on my HTC Desire much nicer.

Most corporations don't want Google or any other outside company knowing the details of their internal operations including meetings and the subject of those meetings. That is why they use Blackberries, since the info is not held on RIM servers, but only on the corporation's servers. If I owned a company I would never allow employees to schedule meetings on Google Calendar. In fact, I would make that a firing offence. Company business is company business, and nobody else's; including Google's. Whoever comes out with a way to keep information secret for companies the way RIM does, they will be able to put the nail in RIM's coffin.

Re:No more

[grub]

Excellent read! Thanks for the link, it's bookmarked for future reference.

Re:No more

[bigstrat2003]

Sure the product needs some work. If you think we're sitting idly on our hands, your wrong.

Well, sorry to say, but based on the current state of RIM's products it appears that they're being designed by PHB's with no clue what people actually want. I mean, seriously, wtf is up with the Playbook?

I don't doubt that RIM employs some great engineers. But when you see them putting out products that bear the hallmarks of PHB interference, it's hard to feel optimistic about the company's ability to put out good products any more - and thus, their future.

Re:No more

[shutdown -p now]

I'm a potential RIM customer.

Can you explain to me concisely, in a few sentences, why I should choose the products of your company over competitors - most notably, Apple? What would I gain by picking a Blackberry phone over iPhone, or (especially) a Playbook over iPad?

I'm also a developer, potentially targeting RIM platforms.

Can you explain to me concisely, why I should target your devices, and not, say, iOS or Android, for my next mobile application? If you rather suggest that I target them and Blackberry, then what is your portability story (other than "you have to write your app for our platform from scratch")?

The answers to those questions are what drives the perception of RIM as a failing company.

Re:No more

[Siridar]

The need to run their own APN's comes courtesy of the SIM provider - they don't meter traffic going out over those APN's. Hence they can offer "Unlimited Blackberry!" Also, the BES stuff works better when its not going straight over the internet - you get absolute control over what the handset can do over the network. If you didn't have that, you'd need a custom APN anyway, that the telco would land on your company's network. Not that it can't be done - most mobile providers will give you a custom APN if you've got deep enough pockets. This means you can do things like land all data traffic (3G dongles, mobile handsets, whatever) on the inside of your network - its like a VPN, only your users can't do anything with the device that you don't want them to. Also handy for VISP'ing 3G connections - the telco does the mobile stuff, you do the internet connectivity stuff, and everyone's happy.

Re:No more

[aristotle-dude]

I find my google calendar on my HTC Desire much nicer.

Most corporations don't want Google or any other outside company knowing the details of their internal operations including meetings and the subject of those meetings. That is why they use Blackberries, since the info is not held on RIM servers, but only on the corporation's servers. If I owned a company I would never allow employees to schedule meetings on Google Calendar. In fact, I would make that a firing offence. Company business is company business, and nobody else's; including Google's. Whoever comes out with a way to keep information secret for companies the way RIM does, they will be able to put the nail in RIM's coffin.

I don't think you understand how the blackberry eco-system works. Everything goes through RIM servers and if you send an email with your BB to someone outside of the company, it goes through the "internet" after travelling through the RIM servers.

Re:No more

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you understand how BES works. Each company installs their own BES server, generates their own encryption keys, and whilst some data (BIS mainly) can go through the RIM servers, all the important company data goes through the BES server and is encrypted using their own keys. And emails to people outside the company? Not confidential.

Re:No more

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. My Evo Shift is performing just wonderfully. It is easily my favorite phone after having owned Blackberries, assorted things from Samsung and Palm and Nokia. My last phone was a similar Android from Samsung. But similar in that they were both mobile devices. The Evo Shift is not just Android. It's the way HTC makes it better. Samsung didn't do any of that. That phone was inferior in every way.

And yes the Shift does email very well. Since this is about where Blackberry is failing, my work email account gets massive amounts of email, such that it is actually unusable on my company issue Blackberry. Too much scrolling. On the Evo Shift, the same emails work much better. Easier to scroll up and down, much easier to find the email I want and bang out a reply.

And then the phone does other things too. My Verizon Blackberry can't do anything else. No web, no 3G, certainly no 4G, nothing that makes it interesting to use in any way. Sure, I can get a more advanced berry. But why? I already have a great device. All a berry would be doing now is catching up to what I already have thanks to HTC. Nah. Not worth a bother.

Re:No more

[Tapewolf]

This really does need to be modded up - it's a long read, but fascinating and having seen something like that happen to another firm, it's probably largely correct.

To my mind, it also resonates with Windows Phone 7. Especially the bit about keeping the cattle happy - that immediately reminded me of the silence from MS about Silverlight's future.

Re:No more

[narcc]

my BB is great at email, but not so great at just about anything else (except SSH)

Their strength is in communication/messaging. Email, sure, but messaging is so much more than that now (social networking, as one example). I won't go into detail, as you can very easily check that out on your own.

This is why BB is so popular with women and business users -- it's simply the best phone for communication. Add to that the astonishing battery life, and you've got a winner.

The Torch, while it still has excellent battery life, isn't nearly as good as their curve and bold line. Still, it's ridiculously good at handling word/excel/powerpoint documents (both editing and creation) due to it's larger screen. The torch keyboard isn't as good as the curve/bold, but still beats the Palm Pre and Droid Pro.

Now, even with an extended battery, the right software, and a keyboard at least as good as the Droid Pro, I still couldn't switch. I've found that without that trackpad, doing virtually anything with text is an absolute nightmare. It also really helps take the pain out of web browsing that many touch-screen phone users have experienced.

Music and videos are handled as well as any other phone. The only real problem RIM has is with games -- which are lacking in abundance, diversity, and quality. Of course, that's not why I have a phone. If I wanted lots of games, I probably switch to Android.

As it stands now, RIM offers phones that meet my needs the best. None of the competitors offer a handset that gives me all of the features I think are important, or do them nearly as well. I really want them to stick around!

Re:No more

[narcc]

Well, sorry to say, but based on the current state of RIM's products it appears that they're being designed by PHB's with no clue what people actually want. I mean, seriously, wtf is up with the Playbook?

Seriously, WTF is wrong with the PlayBook? Of all the tablets on the market, it's the only one I find attractive.

I know, "native email" -- which I don't care about even a little bit. As a BB user, I have neither the need nor the desire to have native email support on the tablet. Bridge gives me everything I want, with company-friendly security. Outside of that, and a buggy launch, it's a ridiculously good tablet.

Releasing an Android just doesn't make any sense to me -- they'd be "just another Android tablet". The UI is astonishing, and you'd only get hate for trying to push an new UI on Android, even one as slick as that seen on the PB.

I shouldn't need to sell QNX to a slashdot user, so I won't bother. Honestly, RIM release an Android tablet -- absolutely ridiculous.

Re:No more

[pandrijeczko]

Just to let you know that I with my dirty little mind smirked at your comment, even if it appears nobody else did. :-)

Re:No more

[pandrijeczko]

The blackberry is still far superior for Exchange email and calendaring than any Android or iPhone device that I've tried.

You're probably right but the fact of the matter is that the world is moving away from just Exchange and calendars to collaboration and tying in several different messaging protocols like email, IM, VoIP, video and cellular comms into one single client on a mobile device - so, for example, you can be halfway through a conference call on your business phone, decide you need to leave the office and seamlessly transfer the call to you cellular phone. Or maybe have voicemails emailed to you as attachments. Or register what communications protocols you have available for others to contact you on by using SIP presence.

The company I work for does all that kind of stuff and whilst there are Blackberry clients for all that stuff we do, they also exist for iPhone and Android.

So what I'm trying to say is that Blackberry may well have provided unparalleled connectivity to Exhange email and the like up to this point in time, but because business communications are themselves changing, software manufacturers like us treat BB, iPhone and Android with equal importance and therefore BB now has to compete at the same level with those other devices.

Re:No more

[pandrijeczko]

Actually, porn is widely attributed to be the reason as to why Betamax failed and VHS didn't - it has nothing to do with technical superiority of one over the other.

When Sony launched Betamax, they did not want their corporate branding associated to pornography so refused to let the porn studios release Betamax versions of the movies. No such restriction was placed on VHS, the market was flooded with porno on VHS and that's how it won.

Incidentally, I've nothing personal again Blackberries, the missus had one for a while and it was a neat little device that's perfect for integration with business email and collaboration.

But the market is changing. There was a time when I didn't mind carrying about and updating three mobile phones (one for home use, one for business and, because I was out in Spain a lot at the time, one on a Spanish mobile provider) because they were simple phones that just got on with it. But nowadays, smartphones and BB do so much that you spend a lot of time configuring them correctly, downloading apps, etc. etc.

For people like me, that means I just want to use one device for everything, a whilst a BB works fine for the business side of things, it falls down on all the personal stuff I want to do with my phone.

Re:No more

[quax]

I have an option to upgrade my old corporate provided blackberry.

The supported phones that I can chose from are:

1. Blackberry Torch
2. iPhone
3. Dell Streak

If I wanted a consumer device only I'd go with the iPhone. But as a consultant who is on the road quite a bit email functionality is still key to me.

I am still considering the iPhone if there is an easy way to pair it to my Laptop so that I have a decent keyboard.

Yet, all Torch users I've been talking to were very happy with the device.

On the other hand I am just inclined to wait and see if you can do better. For now my old blackberry does what I need it for. For play time I have an Notionink Adam at home. Wouldn't want any corporate data on that device for sure.

I think if you keep your focus on the business crowd i.e. security, reliability, long battery life, good remote admin tools, keyboard, key business apps you'll remain the guys to beat in that domain.

BTW originally I hated my Blackberry having been forced to give up my Moto A760. But it won me over. What it does is what I need to do my job and what it does it does well.

Re:No more

[bigstrat2003]

I know, "native email" -- which I don't care about even a little bit. As a BB user, I have neither the need nor the desire to have native email support on the tablet.

That's great for you and all, but the rest of us (ie, most people) want actual proper email support. That IS the main problem. Whoever decided that tethering a Blackberry was ever a reasonable scenario was on drugs of the highest quality.

Re:No more

[LibRT]

I used BBs exclusively for nearly a decade, until two weeks ago, when I finally got a personal phone (my company agreed I would be permitted to use my BB for personal and business use from the onset, so I never had a personal phone or a, gasp, land line). I never thought I would switch to a touchscreen phone - the lack of a hard keyboard was always a deal-breaker for me. Until I tried Swype.

Now I have a Nexus S and I'm absolutely delighted by it and wish I'd bought it sooner. Using Swype, I can 'type' faster than I ever could on the BB keyboard, and I'm pretty damn fast on a BB. Adding in all the other features Android includes made me quickly realize I'll never go back to BB, and I was a long-time BB evangelist. When I occasionally use a friend's BB, the OS now feels so outdated. Most of my BB-using friends are on google talk now, so we can still IM (altho I have to admit I miss the little "d" and "r" status indicator for delivered and read BBMs).

Re:No more

[NoseyNick]

You surprise me. Have you actually MEASURED your typing speed, or do you just FEEL swype is faster? I found it quite trivial to equal the Swype "world record" on my BB Torch keyboard on my first try, and to quite easily beat it after 3 or 4 tries. Turns out the small-print on the swype record is "for a touchscreen" and it's not hard to beat on a real keyboard.

Re:No more

[Anonymous Coward]

In one country. Not the world.

Re:No more

[LibRT]

No, I haven't measured it - that's a good idea, and I'll do that. It feels an awful lot faster. Have you compared? Maybe you'd be even faster on Swype. You're right tho: it could just seem that way because there's far less effort involved (ie you're just moving one finger as opposed to pressing down on each key).

What I can say is that the typical non-Swype soft keyboard is horribly slow - as I mentioned, it's a deal-breaker for me, because I send a lot of emails, often involving detailed explanations.

Re:No more

[theshowmecanuck]

You don't understand Blackberry. Companies do not use Blackberries the same way individual consumers who purchase service from a phone company use Blackberries. BTW the individual consumer model is also the way iPhones and Android phones work. The consumer model has no way of providing secure communication. The corporate model does.

Each company using Blackberries has a Blackberry server at their company that talks to their email servers. RIM doesn't have access to this data. The data is then encrypted and passed back and forth to the Blackberry devices. Again, RIM doesn't have access to this data because it is encrypted. Only emails to public addresses are accessible. iPhones and Android phones do not have a way to provide secure communication within a company using their devices as RIM/Blackberry does, and this is why iPhones and Android phones are NOT suitable for business. And then there is Google mail where you are just giving them your data to mine.

Internal company emails sent by Blackberry are not accessible/readable by anyone outside the company, including RIM. i.e. Company emails are confidential. Google emails are not confidential, and Google will know everything that you discuss about your company that is in your emails, even if the emails are between employees of said company. If you are happy with sharing confidential information with Google, then go ahead. Most companies of any size are not.

Re:No more

[Anonymous Coward]

You shouldn't be asserting what anyone should be thinking with that kind of spelling. Since you seem to be having great trouble with very simple things, let me patch up you're spelling until you can get back to the first grade.

Oh no! You claim it was so bad yet you knew exactly what he meant to the point that based purely on what he wrote you were able to correct it. The fact that the only contribution you were capable of was that which you purport to be the knowledge of a first-grader shows what an utterly useless and unintelligent person you are.

Re:No more

[Anonymous Coward]

What would I gain by picking a Blackberry phone over iPhone

Better call quality, physical keyboard, secure email, BBM.

a Playbook over iPad?

More portable, is tied to your BB so your data is stored consistently in one place, better video format support, flash (if you need it, turn it on, if you don't need it turn it off...at least you get the choice).

Re:No more

[shutdown -p now]

Better call quality

I have no idea what you mean - i.e. how BB is special in that regard - but I haven't had any problems with call quality on a variety of phones (iPhone and a bunch of Android ones) over the last few years. It's "good enough", and I don't see what I'd gain from it being any better. So not a notable point.

physical keyboard

That's a subjective preference. I'll give you that it can be a big selling point for some. Fine, now what if we compare against Android - where there are a bunch of phones with physical keyboards, in various form factors?

secure email

What's not secure about SSL?

BBM

I had no idea what that is, so I looked up on Wikipedia. I stopped reading at the second sentence, which said "communication is only possible between two BlackBerry devices". None of the people I know use a BB device as a personal phone. Heck, for that matter, none of my colleagues use a BB device as a work phone. For the most part, it's iPhone and Android.

More portable

Or you could say "smaller screen". Also very much a subjective point.

is tied to your BB

That's not a positive thing.

so your data is stored consistently in one place

On my Android phone & tablet, mail is stored "in the cloud", and contacts, bookmarks etc are all synced via the same. So my data is consistent, and even if I lose both devices I'll still have it - and yet the devices themselves are completely independent of each other.

better video format support, flash

I don't consider those major selling points over iPad, from personal experience of using phones and tablets (despite the fact that my Android devices can show it, I think I've used the capability only once in the last few months). That said, again, what if you compare vs Android?

RIM is still golden

[pjh3000]

It's just a transition period for RIM. They have a diverse portfolio and deep pockets along with a huge stable of talent. I think they're just being slammed in the American media because they're a successful Canadian company that can go toe to toe with Google and Apple.

Re:RIM is still golden

[Anonymous Coward]

They're being slammed because they put out subpar products not because they're Canadian. They fail to measure up to the functionality and ease of use that comes with Android and iOS. It's quite sad considering they started the smartphone.

Re:RIM is still golden

[rskbrkr]

In what manner are they going toe to toe with Google or Apple? Every sales figure I've seen shows Droid and iPhone battling for the top two spot and Blackberry at number three and falling further behind. More businesses are adopting Droid and iPhone for the enterprise environment, while the short fad of teenboopers with Blackberry is long over. Storm was not well received, and Playbook was almost universally panned. Oh wait, it plays flash...

Re:RIM is still golden

[Anonymous Coward]

Dead AND Canadian.

Re:RIM is still golden

[errandum]

When they had a superior product they were on top. They failed to realize the threat the iPhone presented, and Google saw the potential of touch interfaces and joined the race on time.

RIM thought they were untouchable and when they decided to move it was a rushed response that came too late.

The only salvation I see for RIM is to embrace Android.

Port the encryption and infrastructure, along with the marvelous keyboards they make to Android and I'm sure they'll survive. Or even grow. Nothing is stopping them from trying and remember that they could even skin android to look like a blackberry. But it'd run aps and have an awesome browser and all the google utilities...

Re:RIM is still golden

[pushing-robot]

Hey—ignore all the haters. I'm just glad to hear you could find work, especially in this economy, and with that job in Iraq on your CV.

Re:RIM is still golden

[farnsworth]

Port the encryption and infrastructure, along with the marvelous keyboards they make to Android and I'm sure they'll survive. Or even grow.

I had a company-issued blackberry for about a decade. Each year or 18 months or so they would get refreshed, and I'd get the latest model. The early models were solid and great in almost every way, but each subsequent model was worse than the one it replaced. They haven't made a decent keyboard in at least 5 years. Their screens got more pixels and more colors each year, but the overall quality of the screens got slowly worse. My employer supports iOS now, and I'm happy to never have to touch a blackberry again.

I also did some app development for blackberry devices, and I can tell you without a doubt they have the worst platform, the worst tools, and it's obvious they never cared about making development workable. I only ever saw one third-party non-game app that was decent, and I estimate it took 15 people 6 months to build that. Compare this to some of the iOS and Android apps that a single person can put out with a couple weeks worth of effort.

Going with Android seems like it would be akin to starting over. I don't see what assets they have that HTC or Samsung don't have. They have their Enterprise Server thing, but I don't understand what advantage that has over Exchange + ActiveSync which every other platform seems to support. I would be happy to be enlightened about what advantages Rim might have left.

Re:RIM is still golden

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, the playbook is really only panned because of Bridge/lack of email, which doesn't matter to most people with a blackberry. Well, I should say that it is only FAIRLY panned because of that. It still does have better hardware than the iPad2.

Re:RIM is still golden

[munky99999]

No. QNX is an epic base. They just need to open their platform up and allow developers free reign like android has.

Re:RIM is still golden

[kevinmenzel]

The Bold 9000 had a wonderful keyboard, and the 9900 is bringing back that keyboard.

Re:RIM is still golden

[errandum]

QNX might be the best thing ever. They got here too late, in my opinion.

Most would argue Mac OS X is the best operative system on the market (I believe it is) but it's current market share is around 7%. Quality does not mean you'll win.

And so far, QNX is a package full of great intentions, not yet a finalized and actually good thing (from what I read)

Re:RIM is still golden

[errandum]

I do believe the crappy keyboards were the ones that did not follow the monolithic approach that got them famous. All the keyboards I've tried (recent or old) that had that familiar layout worked great (my opinion, obviously)

Re:RIM is still golden

[avatar139]

When they had a superior product they were on top. They failed to realize the threat the iPhone presented, and Google saw the potential of touch interfaces and joined the race on time.

RIM thought they were untouchable and when they decided to move it was a rushed response that came too late.

The only salvation I see for RIM is to embrace Android.

Port the encryption and infrastructure, along with the marvelous keyboards they make to Android and I'm sure they'll survive. Or even grow. Nothing is stopping them from trying and remember that they could even skin android to look like a blackberry. But it'd run aps and have an awesome browser and all the google utilities...

I think what you're forgetting here that a lot of their business sales revenue results from using their mobile platform to leverage their proprietary BlackBerry Enterprise Server sales so I find it pretty unlikely that RIM would choose to suddenly discard that higher-margin strategy in favor of choosing to go to Android which is already overcrowded with handset vendors churning out cheap low-margin phones.

Honestly, while I think RIM's attitude towards developers really hasn't done them in any favors in recent years, I think the biggest thing that's been killing them is one of pitfalls that Google is starting to fall into, which is having numerous channels of software sales distribution which makes application installation and deployment way, WAY more complicated then it's worth compared to iOS devices.

They have carrier specific stores, handset specific stores, and more recently even device specific stores, so let's face it, if most SysAdmins have to do a bunch of research just to figure out where to get applications from and how to deploy said applications on a specific series of devices, few consumers (no matter how tech-savy) are going to be prepared to put with all the confusion which is why I think migration on both the consumer and corporate side will continue to steadily head away from RIM to other mobile operating systems until RIM's management FINALLY figures out that the mobile market has changed greatly and they can grow a pair to enable them to finally stand up to the carriers when they try to dictate separate stores and what features should be included in the hardware design (case in point on that was letting Verizon kill wi-fi on the Storm)!

Re:RIM is still golden

[swalve]

Agree 1000%. The Bold is what brought RIM from a corporate tool to the mainstream, and then they shit the bed by trying to gain marketshare by diluting the brand with cheap toy phones. They need to cede the toy marketplace to Apple and Android, and innovate and compete in the "really good communication tool" marketplace. The people who buy phones because of the bling factor are going to be awful customers anyway. Be the Mac of the phone world: develop and deliver on an idea that their hardware is expensive, and worth every penny. (Apple, sadly, has the reputation, but not the delivery.)

Re:RIM is still golden

[kevinmenzel]

Unfortunately the problem is that even when RIM brings in hundreds of millions in profits, investors are still the same group petulant babies that use democracy to pad their pockets at the expense of society, and use paper wealth as a replacement for a penis, who say "Damn it! I'm not making as much money as my unrealistic expectations lead me to believe that I should have, hence I will join in this all out media attack on the Berry because I want to be cool and don't care enough to research the companies I'm investing in myself, relying instead on the ocassional single column article in the free newspaper I get everyday to determine my views". People are aweful. When can something be done about them... But yes, RIM needs to continue to focus on being the be all and end all of mobile communication, and as far as I've seen, it doesn't look like they're changing that focus. Even with the Playbook, which really should have been marketed as a blackberry accessory at this point, the focus is still clearly on communication. The way it bridges with blackberries is just awesome. But I bet they felt a hell of a lot of pressure to "do something with the QNX purchase" in the "next couple of quarters" because the investors in the tech market are rarely people who understand that taking an extant operating system and developing it in a secure way that seamlessly integrates into extant enterprise environments with the full benefit of the secuirity affoarded the current line of devices isn't a "next couple of quarters" type task. And business reporters certainly don't seem to give a damn about operational details of a company or realities of specific markets.

Re:RIM is still golden

[bigstrat2003]

Exactly. RIM is engaging in marketing because they think the problem is that consumers don't think their products are cool enough or some shit like that (I actually know this from experience, but probably shouldn't say more than that). What they don't realize is that you can't overcome massive product inferiority with sheer marketing. You can overcome some amount of inferiority, but when you're as far behind as RIM is your only option is to step up and produce a decent product. And they seem committed to pretending that their products are good, that it's just the perception that needs to be changed. If attitudes don't change at RIM, they will die. It's as simple as that.

Re:RIM is still golden

[narcc]

Every sales figure I've seen shows Droid and iPhone battling for the top two spot and Blackberry at number three and falling further behind

Apple and Andorid only recently (this year) passed RIM -- though in the case of Apple still within the margin of error.

BlackBerry is new to the #3 spot, I can only assume that you started following things this year?

They really need to get their act together if they want to stay at #3, let alone knock Apple out of it's newly acquired #2 spot. The weak offerings last year and the "still no new phones" this year are killing them.

They've made some really smart acquisitions over the past 18 months. They're debt-free and they've got the talent, cash, experience, and the brand to survive this transition.

So, yes, they can and are going toe-to-toe with Apple and Google, turning a profit all the while.

RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Early leaders in their respective fields, but then got lazy because they didn't think their customers would go anywhere.

Then technologies and features got old and stale, and by the time they realized it, it could never catch up again.

These days, both RIM and slashdot are pretty much doing a slow drain around the bowl. Sad, because you remember what once was, and what could have been.

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[kwerle]

I have an iPhone.

Where do I go for my /. replacement?

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[jawtheshark]

Pray tell me where I can get the intelligent (or at least semi-intelligent) discussions we used to have on slashdot in the olden days? I partially blame the fact that slashdot has become less interesting because I learned so much from it. Once you assimilated some knowledge, it becomes less interesting even though it gets featured again on slashdot.

True, slashdot has changed, the audience most likely has changed too. I still wait for a place "better" than slashdot and I'll be glad to get some links.

Compared to so many other sites, the intellectual level here in slashdot is astonishingly high. Go read the comments on youtube or yahoo answers sometimes. If you hate the spelling and grammar mistakes here and people who can't discern college and collage, or weather and whether, then you'll puke your guts out on every other site out there.

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Hacker News or Reddit /r/programming or other technical reddits.

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Where do I go for my /. replacement?

ars?

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot is still far superior to those piles of shit. Hacker News is nothing but armchair "entrepreneurs" going on and on about their "startups". Reddit is nothing but hipsters who pop stiffies for Ruby and Macs. At least Slashdot has a variety of personalities and opinions.

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[cyber-vandal]

I've been visiting this site since 1998 and have yet to find somewhere else where so many comments are well thought out and rational. I don't think there's too many places on the net where you could have this level of conversation. Kuro5hin used to be good but 9/11 turned its members into rednecks pretty much overnight. It has its flaws, the Javascript bugs being the most annoying, but it was my first internet forum and I doubt I'll stop visiting any time soon.

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[SuperKendall]

Reddit is the Blackberry to Slashdot's iPhone.

Yes, the discrepancy is that high. Even Digg is preferred over Reedit. Even Digg 2.0...

Slashdot still draws a very decent readership level.

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Pray tell me where I can get the intelligent (or at least semi-intelligent) discussions we used to have on slashdot in the olden days?

When the mods kill the AJAX and force everyone back to classic discussion mode.

If I have to click on every comment to expand it in full, you can be damn sure I'm going to ignore 99% of the discussion. If users could, with a single mouseclick, view the entire discussion (whether I start at 0, -1, or 1), they might be more inclined to read the threads and contribute.

(Interesting metric: I wonder how many active posters are reading in Slash 3.0, 2.0, or Classic, and how that compared to a year or two ago?)

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[krewemaynard]

ME TOO LOLOL!!!!!!!!!!11

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[Nethead]

And, can we keep our low UIDs when we move? Didn't think so. I like being an old fart on the legacy service. Hell, I remember when images.slashdot.org was on a 90MHz Pentium box running slackware.

I guess that's why I still have my Blackberry. And T-Mobile let's me tether it on Ubuntu.

And why yes! I am a ham radio operator. Did you want to see my 77 baud Teletype?

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw something that could be interesting on /r/shamelessplug: http://www.hubholic.com/ Brand new, looks like it's in beta...least user ratings work...I think. so now the trick is to only tell competent people about it and take over the electronics and math/science sections ....or not, 99% sure it'll just crash and burn like most websites that are starting out.

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[kungfoolery]

Slashdot: we're less dumb than everywhere else!

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an iPhone.

Where do I go for my /. replacement?

Reddit

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[nemasu]

How about....a 'special' comment section where you have to solve a graduate level problem to get entry.

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

"Compared to so many other sites, the intellectual level here in slashdot is astonishingly high. Go read the comments on youtube or yahoo answers sometimes. If you hate the spelling and grammar mistakes here and people who can't discern college and collage, or weather and whether, then you'll puke your guts out on every other site out there."

Try arstechnica.com or many of the other sites that have picked up. I've been an AC on Slashdot for over tens years now and I assure you that the discussions were way more intelligent back in the day. These days, it's fairly common to see a contentless one-liner modded +5 insightful or unsourced hyperbolic statements modded +5 informative, many of which could be well placed on Glen Beck's show. Back then, it wasn't uncommon to have someone who was (or claimed to be), for example, a philosophy professor, make a long insightful post that would blow away typical computer geeks like us. Those types seem to have all but driven off. It use to be common to read a random Slashdot article and see a mini technology celebrity like John Carmack make a post about something unrelated to his field and make posts on topics related to his field. Whenever Nasa did something cool and there was a slashdot post on it, you'd see some of the actual engineers making posts about it and answering questions. There are still a few posters like that, but not nearly as many as there use to be.

Back then, there seemed to be more of an understanding among Slashdot posters that technology was ultimately about solving people problems and there was an appreciation of the perspective from other fields, even the humanities, there seemed to be an understanding that learning to code at ten years old isn't a novelty and doesn't make you a genius, there wasn't this adolescent I'm a genius special snowflake complex, there was an understanding that knowing how to use computers doesn't make you an expert in other subjects.

I could go on, but I'm ranting at this point. Slashdot was way better, or maybe I'm just getting old...

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[snowraver1]

While I agree that ars has better editing and stories, /.'s discussion system is what keeps me coming back.

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

"let's"?

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, except that slashdot isn't run by a cabal of "management" assholes who treat everyone under them as though they are incompetent assholes. In the early press releases Mike Lazaridis refused to blame the management team. The management "team" is the fucking problem.

I'm SICK of the myth that RIM is run by a group of brilliant people who invented the smartphone and all things nice and shiny.

RIM did NOT invent the smartphone. RIM invented a pager that did interactive messaging. It's what they were good at. They only jumped on the smartphone bandwagon when they realized everyone ELSE was promoting 3rd party applications ("apps" to you 13-year-old-shitheads) on their phones. Ask yourself: WHEN did "Appworld" appear? The train had already left the fucking station.

RIM existed simply because they provided something no one else did: messageing.. BBM, a glorified AIM. When 9/11 happened RIM was the cat's ass WHY? Because NO ONE ELSE was using the old, antiquated, slow and shitty Mobitex network. But that was an eternity ago. Talk about dumb luck...that's like saying "the internet is down" but the guys to save the day were using X.25.

So after Apple had already won the game, RIM comes along with the Playbook...based on QNX, an operating system that has always been lauded but NEVER, EVER succeeded. But RIM FAILS to put this great OS on their phones...STILL. So now devs have to choose between a 10 year old crappy API BBOS or QNX. And the NEW RIM phones don't support QNX. The Playbook is DOA.

Slashdot? Slashdot is a teenaged idea that evolved into adulthood. In the teenaged years, this place was all about Linux. Now CmdrTaco uses a fucking Mac. Hell we used to shed blood here over GNOME vs. KDE...nowadays that's the kindergarten playground.

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[swalve]

Metafilter. That's where you go for smug self-importance.

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[RelliK]

reddit.com. It's what slashdot should have been.

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd suggest Reddit's programming subreddit.

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[Narbo]

Ehhhh, as someone who has been around for a while I assure you the signal to noise ratio here is still good and thats what really counts.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[El_Oscuro]

As you run out into the parking lot, you briefly spot a flash of pink. Turning around you can't see anything but other people seem to be avoiding the area where you saw the flash.

Now you can see it. It is a spaceship and is pink, but that is the least of its problems. While it has the usual rockets and fins, it seems like it should fall apart right where it is. Perhaps Marvin designed it. Slartibartfast urges you on, as the sky is ... well you don't really want to know. You hop in the spaceship and the interior is even stupider then the exterior. In one room, you can see congress debating the national debt while in another everyone is going on strike while the company off-shores everything to china.

The entire design of the ship seems to be concentrating stupidity, If you have to actually use the controls in an emergency situation you would get sucked into a black hole, rather than evading whatever emergency you faced.

Slartibarfast explains: Stupidity is the most powerful force in the universe. We can only harness the energy of 1% of stupidity, yet we can use it in ways that make both the Heart of Gold and the Bistonatic drive seem like Prams. "Earth and Vogon provide the purest, sweetest stupidity, but we can find sufficient quantities everywhere in the universe."

Slartibartfast pushes the "do not push" button and wow, you have found a new religion.

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell that to Digg.

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[davester666]

Exactly. The Hitler references are what keep me coming back for more...

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[SuperKendall]

And, can we keep our low UIDs when we move? Didn't think so. I like being an old fart on the legacy service.

Well, perhaps you can, I don't consider mine especially low... I always was late to jump on trendy websites. :-)

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

reddit.com

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[shutdown -p now]

There is a slider right above the comments section of the story (on the right side) which lets you control how many comments are hidden and how many are collapsed. You can move it all the way to the right for both and never have to expand a comment again.

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

There are some high-value comments still on here. I think part of the trouble is that after a while, keeping up with the intake of articles demands only surface-level comprehension, and the comments are dominated by those selfsame types -- things with just the right tone and rehashing of Economics 101 concerns to be moderated up, and the cycle repeats.

The depth is also selected against: similar to Wikipedia, the expert comes here to share some specific and factual knowledge. The trouble is, he probably isn't going to be learning anything new on the topic; he does that with interactions he has with other experts -- he then is posting for the benefits of sophists and ingrates, who don't realize that to explore implications past the level of a child requires dependencies. These dependencies must exist in one mind all at the same time -- a Wikipedia primer won't cut it, unless of course all you want to do is "nail" someone like John Carmack with witticisms according to the goals in my first paragraph.

And so, there is a conflict eventually. The ones remaining are from the wrong side of the opportunity-cost choice, putting time in for reasons other than scientifically-obtained knowledge.

You asked for a link to another site; here it is.

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[PwnzerDragoon]

1. Invoke Godwin's Law
2. Compare Hitler to a car somehow
3. ????
4. Profit!

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[ya really]

Pray tell me where I can get the intelligent (or at least semi-intelligent) discussions we used to have on slashdot in the olden days?

I suggest hacker news

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[tylernt]

Slashdot: we're less dumb than everywhere else!

Nothing to be ashamed of. "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."

Kind of like the plot to Idiocracy.

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[afidel]

ARS Technica is the other place I hang out for techy, geeky stuff.

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[UBfusion]

Reddit is not an IT site. Its stories are mainly centered about having fun, internet memes and the decline of America. The discussions are at most at college level, with that characteristic childish obsession on puns.

However, there is much humanity in there. What impresses me most is that discussions, as childish they may be sometime, are never aggressive and in general follow an implicit politeness etiquette. Boobs may be shown or implied, but female members are extrovert, do participate, explain how they think and have fun. Posts where random people/professionals open themselves in the "ask me anything" vein are very interesting. The "today I learned" theme is full of interesting facts. Also, some of the pics posted have real artistic/factual/curiosity value.

I wouldn't say it's what slashdot should have been, but for those that have time on their hands, it's a fun and rather healthy pastime that reminds them of their innocent college/school years.I'm 53 and I'm not ashamed to admit that often reddit makes my day.

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[crunzh]

http://news.ycombinator.com/ is your Best bet, decent discussions

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

hacker news.

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[gilgongo]

Early leaders in their respective fields, but then got lazy because they didn't think their customers would go anywhere.

Hey - I've got a five-digit ID, and I distinctly recall almost EXACTLY the same comment when I joined, only that time it was Slashdot being like Apple! Back then, Amelio was leaving, and things were looking grim for the Mac.

Not saying that RIM will go that way (oooooh no), but I just thought it was pretty funny.

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[dr.newton]

I quite like Ars, but you can't trust them about anything that is related to Apple.

I like that on Slashdot it's more news and less opinion.

If this site just had the ability to collapse threads, so people could skip fanboy ratholes with a single click, it would be a big improvement.

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[nobodie]

Let me ditto this, I was checking a local expat forum for shipping companies to move my stuff back to the US, and the level of ... what to call it? not a discussion when someone spews puerile sewage all over the page and then attaches a video so we can see them mouthing "fuck you".

No i'm not old and crotchety normally, but this was supposed to be an informational forum for people who live overseas. The level was just childish and... damn, what is the word for this pitiful kind of psycho-tourettic speech?
 

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been reading /. that long as well, and I heartily agree. Slashdot's moniker is "News for Nerds, Things that Matter" but over the years I've found through the posts that it's also "News from Nerds, People who Matter." Where else can you read a story about, say, the Mars Pathfinder mission and get someone who's actually working on it to post? Where else do you get Will Wheaton and Bruce Perens actively participating in threads? And I think I actually saw Bruce Schneier comment before, but that was years ago. Honest to god rocket scientists, nuclear physicists working at CERN or Fermilab, biochemists, doctors, lawyers working on IP issues, FOSS activists, hackers, and others are all here. And what's more, the comments are well-thought out and witty. I learn something new every time I visit the site. And when I want to know if something reported in the press is BS or not, I come here and read first-hand reports from people directly involved or who know vastly more about the subject than I do.

You do have your silly comments and juvenile antics, but the moderation system is pretty good at driving that stuff below the visibility threshhold. Compare that to Digg or any other site, whose moderation systems are terminally broken. In fact, many's the time over the years that I've built community sites for clients that are modeled on Slashdot's moderation system.

I love technology and science of all varieties, but there are only three things I am thoroughly passionate about: My thinkpad X41 convertible tablet, Emperor Linux, and Slashdot.

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[Xacid]

I suspect I missed the golden hayday of Slashdot so I propose this: Submit stories you feel are in the spirit of the good ol' days. Perhaps even teach someone something. :)

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

"I've been visiting this site since 1998 and have yet to find somewhere else where so many comments are well thought out and rational."

I agree, but so many in my view is relative to conversations elsewhere such that "so many" can be defined as a tiny handful.

That's to say, yes, I agree, you get the odd gems on Slashdot- people who really know their field and really know their stuff and are willing to explain it, which is more than can be said for anywhere else, but the number of those posts nowadays, particularly relative to those in the past is just painfully low. You would't used to go a discussion without a handful of good quality posts, now you have to go through a handful of discussions to find one of them.

The issue now is the number of comments that are just plain outright wrong but get modded up, it drowns out the more interesting comments and puts people who actually know what they're on about off posting altogether.

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[SuperKendall]

Slashdot users with four digit IDs are allowed to place apostrophes wherever they damn well please.

You had best be careful with critique as that arbitrary placement includes portions of your anatomy I suspect you wish to keep free an apostrophe, if not the colon...

Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot

[SomePgmr]

Likewise. I do like Ars for the content, though I don't spend a lot of time in the forums there. I also hit up Reddit every-so-often. They're different beasts though.

I've been pretty happy with Slashdot's user comments when using the moderation system properly to avoid the noise. I've been visiting about as long as you have, and I keep coming back... that's no small feat.

RIM IS CIRCLING THE BOWL !!

[Anonymous Coward]

It always has been a turd of canadian heritage so all the more fitting.

Get 'em HP!

[Sponge Bath]

HP can do for RIM what they did for DEC and Palm... and er, HP.

Re:Get 'em HP!

[LurkerXXX]

Dumb idea by WSJ for HP to buy Nokia's OS. Really Dumb.

Nokia's OSs:

Symbian: Their main OS. Old and busted. It needs updating in a major way, which isn't happening, which is why they went to Meemo.

Meemo: Cool version of Linux that they didn't get behind fully and refused to throw the resources they needed to into to get it up to snuff quickly. Nokia is a big company with a lot of money. They just refused to spend enough of it quickly enough to get the OS going. This is the same issue HP is having now with their version of Linux, WebOS.

Yeah, yeah, I hear some folks saying 'mythical man month', 'it just couldn't be done that quickly'. BS. Google did it with another flavor of Linux, Android.

Meamo/Meego. After botching Meamo, they decided to F' it up even more by combining it with Moblin to make yet another version of Linux that they wouldn't put resources behind. Any Lessons learned? Nope. Now they moved on to Windows Phone...

In the meantime Palmdeveloped a great OS in WebOS. Palm was small and poor and didn't have the resources necessary to pour into it to get it things where they should be. No office editing software, no flash, no lots of things. Lots of promising things were coming, but not enough cash to hire the developers to make it happen. Not enough cash to make several models of phones, and of the two models they did make, the Pre and Pixie, the higher end model, the Pre, had lots of hardware issues, making them Sprints all time leader on phones-needing-repairs.

HP buys Palm for WebOS. The problem? They, just like Nokia, aren't putting enough resource into getting software developed for it, or new hardware out to run it on.

The Pre3 is going to be launched 'soon'. Their new flagship phone. It's hardware is mediocre at best compared to new hardware that is out now, and more that will be available before it is launched. HP doesn't have any hardware engineers who could have worked on something more up to scratch in the last year?

Oh, and their new tablet, the TouchPad. Targeted at the enterprise. And it will be launched without any document editing software. No document editing. For enterprise...

Not even a powerpoint viewer. For enterprise...

Are you telling me HP couldn't afford to hire some extra devs to get something running on it, or at least ported? In the last year? Really? They are HP for f**k's sake.

Buying Symbian/Meamo/Meego will do absolutely nothing for them because the management is screwing up. Another OS in the same state isn't going to fix that.

Re:Get 'em HP!

[LurkerXXX]

Ack, I'm an idiot. RIM, not Nokia.

RIM has good potential with QNX. It's an awesome OS.

HP buying it would be the same deal though. It doesn't have apps, needs relevant hardware, and needs development a lot of resources through at it to get it up to polish. HP has been making horrible decisions with all those things. Hopefully RIMs management will do better and learn from HP and Nokia's mistakes.

Re:Get 'em HP!

[tyrione]

It's the WSJ. They continue to not understand technologies until the successes are entrenched and then the proclaim to revise history and tell the world how ahead of the curve their analysts were for x, y, and z. They are crap.

Fatal flaw

[arcite]

The RIM tablet version 1.0 was unable to access email without tethering. I mean...what were they thinking? Time to parter with Microsoft or face the Abyss.

Re:Fatal flaw

[jjetson]

I got a Playbook from work on day 1. And on day 1 it had the ability to log into my gmail account using mobile gmail and it looked good and worked good. My work email could also be accessed through webmail. Not sure where you're getting this "The RIM tablet version 1.0 was unable to access email without tethering". But it's 100% false. If you're talking about BlackBerry Bridge, that allows you to connect to your BlackBerry device and interface with it in certain ways. One of which is the ability to view/create/delete etc. email thats on a BlackBerry.

Re:Fatal flaw

[iluvcapra]

The RIM tablet version 1.0 was unable to access email without tethering.

They think the tablet is just a peripheral of the phone. Apple spent a long time thinking iPhones are a peripheral of iTunes and have only very recently changed their tune. Of course, iTunes is a free computer program you download off the internet and a BB smartphone is an expensive smartphone... Okay so maybe they aren't thinking.

Time to parter with Microsoft or face the Abyss.

Or Google? Seems like an Android, customized for BES might be a spicy meatball in this market. Ya know, iPhone-competitive handset software with Blackberry-level corporate administration, no weird Apple procurement issues, etc...

Of course, it was a good idea they shoulda had two years ago, before they committed to QNX and their particular strategy, and the last several years of fog and fail.

As it is, it's not "time" for them to partner with anybody, as they aren't going to have new phones out until spring 2012 as it is. The time for partnering has passed, and announcing a new platform now would push that to winter, and RIMs strategic roadmap into Osborne territory.

Re:Fatal flaw

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously i think arcite was talking about Blackberry Bridge...

A blackberry device that cant view your blackberry emails without hooking it up to another blackberry device? Why would someone desiring blackberry email service want a device that cant run this without another device? And why are you surprised this concept was lost by the target market?

BlackBerry Bridge isn't a feature, its a clunky bolt-on piece of junk. If a customer wants to view webmail they could have purchased any other industry leading tablet for a comparable price with 10x larger app and content ecosystem.

Re:Fatal flaw

[jjetson]

Obviously? Saying something doesn't access email != saying something doesn't access Blackberry email accounts. Which by the way can be accessed by 3rd party apps. I have no problems with Bridge and use it for BBM all the time. 10x larger app and content ecosystem? Only iPad has more tablet specific apps. You're a prime example of the ignorance prevalent in the mobile industry right now. I had a choice between an iPad (about 10 of my co-workers have them), and a PlayBook. After fooling around with the iPad I choose the PlayBook and whether you want to believe it or not 3 guys in my department wanted to trade in their iPads for a PlayBook. Mind you they got turned down and now have to keep the iPads.

Re:Fatal flaw

[quacking duck]

We rented a Playbook to check it out and compare it against the iPad my boss already has. The objective was to see how intuitive it was to set up and use without relying on help files or Google, and how it handled our existing Flash-based content.

On the plus column, its app switching is pretty slick compared to iOS. The front-facing speakers are a definite plus over the iPad, which shoots sound out the side instead of at you. On the Flash front, it runs it fairly well, with the usual caveats about Flash content that assumes a mouse. Size-wise, it is more convenient to tote around than an iPad.

In the minus column things added up fast and immediately.

Playbook couldn't find an ad-hoc wireless network, and couldn't connect manually to them. My 2-year old iPhone found and connected to them immediately. I couldn't get past the setup screen until I brought it home.

Its touchscreen responsiveness is flaky. Input fields had to be tapped 2 or 3 times to bring up the keyboard. And scrolling was inconsistent--small movements wouldn't get picked up, but a small flick would scroll an entire page or two.

The Adobe Reader app was atrociously bad. Four Adobe Acrobat-generated PDFs, 0.5 to 1.6 MB in size, were slow to load and didn't render parts properly once scrolled on-screen. Several times it completely choked the Playbook--touchscreen wouldn't respond at all. Supposedly this thing is many times faster than my iPhone, which rendered those same PDFs immediately and properly.

Back to Flash: More than one Flash object on a webpage and it got choppy. Much as my boss thinks Apple was dead wrong on not supporting Flash, clearly Apple had a point about it being a huge drain on battery and poor user experience, even now but especially back in 2007 when iPhone came out.

The spreadsheet app: how the heck do you enter formulae references into the cells? Not by tapping the cells you want, that makes them the active selection. The most basic thing in a spreadsheet next to entering numbers, and I have to look up the help file to figure out how it works?

And finally, no mail, calendar or contacts apps. RIM couldn't have said "you don't have Blackberries in your company? We don't want your business" any clearer than this. Doesn't matter if it'll be out later this summer, first impressions are key, and my boss declared this a dealbreaker.

We're Canadian, we wanted to support a Canadian company, but Playbook rev 1 is not ready for prime time.

Re:Fatal flaw

[shutdown -p now]

I got a Playbook from work on day 1. And on day 1 it had the ability to log into my gmail account using mobile gmail and it looked good and worked good.

In this day and age, when we talk about "accessing email" on a modern device, we don't mean logging into a web interface and poking around. What about new mail notifications? Unread email count?

Re:Fatal flaw

[Anonymous Coward]

RIM announced an Android player to run Android apps, so it seems they realize they can't make it on their own or they want to hedge risks.

Re:Fatal flaw

[multipartmixed]

Interesting review -- thanks. I had the opportunity to try a pre-release unit and had pretty much the same UI complaints. I *was* really impressed with the border-oriented navigation, I thought that was actually innovative.

As far as I'm concerned, the Playbook is just a Web-with-Flash tablet. I use my iPad and iPhone with Gmail (actually, Google Apps for My Domain or whatever it's called these days) and the email/calendar integration is quite good. Google interoperates with exchange as well, so when somebody invites me to a meeting, I get a pop-up asking me if I can go, and then a warning before the meeting, etc.

Playbook couldn't find an ad-hoc wireless network, and couldn't connect manually to them. My 2-year old iPhone found and connected to them immediately.

If you have an iPhone 4, recentish firmware, and 1 GB or better plan on Rogers, you can activate Personal Hotspot and feed the Playbook that way. Works like a charm, albeit a large, clumsy charm.

I've noticed that nobody has been talking about Android apps. One of the guys I know was raving about the ability to run apps from the Android store on their own Dalvik interpreter. Did that not ship?

Re:Fatal flaw

[quacking duck]

Playbook couldn't find an ad-hoc wireless network, and couldn't connect manually to them. My 2-year old iPhone found and connected to them immediately.

If you have an iPhone 4, recentish firmware, and 1 GB or better plan on Rogers, you can activate Personal Hotspot and feed the Playbook that way. Works like a charm, albeit a large, clumsy charm.

I did try this with a co-worker's iPhone 4. The Playbook did see this wifi hotspot, but still failed to connect to it. I later read that this may have been due to the Playbook not liking the apostrophe in hotspot's name which was the default "(User)'s iPhone". Funny how the office laptops I tried and my own iPhone again had no problems connecting to it.

I've noticed that nobody has been talking about Android apps. One of the guys I know was raving about the ability to run apps from the Android store on their own Dalvik interpreter. Did that not ship?

Didn't get to downloading or trying any apps, so I can't say. When I mentioned Angry Birds wasn't available, my boss joked that this was almost as big a dealbreaker as not having mail/calendar/contacts apps :-)

Oh, that'd be perfect for HP.

[FooAtWFU]

Look! Let's buy out another failing company with a somewhat-interesting product to replace the last failing company with a somewhat-interesting product we bought. That'll totally work.

It's like when they bought Colubris to replace their Symbol OEM APs, only to buy 3Com a little while later. I dunno, maybe they can squeeze some money out of it.

Re:Oh, that'd be perfect for HP.

[Anonymous Coward]

Rim probably is a good takeover candidate, but maybe from a lower price. Their user base has to be appealing to any number of handset vendors. I don't see how Rim can continue, either. Between iOS, Android and Windows Phone, there is no space left for them in the market. Currently they can hang on given their exclusive designation as a handset provider to the US Government, but all of the other handset/OS providers are going through the same approval process.

The best way for HP to make money from Rim would be to buy hundreds of put and call options on the stock, since I doubt it will stay at the current price for long. Given HPs track record with Palm, that seems to be the best <pun>option.</pun>

Re:Oh, that'd be perfect for HP.

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, I left HP in another country in 2007 and came to Canada. Got a job offer at RIM, but took a better offer in downtown Toronto. If I had taken the RIM JOB and HP buys them out, that would have been the 2nd time I was 'taken over' into HP. I was Compaq when they got imbibed.

As it is, I am in a small company and miss the big companies. I was in MS before Compaq, maybe I should take on e of those IBM contracts.

RIM makes BlackBerry that can’t read email

[David Gerard]

Research in Motion have broken new barriers with the PlayBook tablet, a BlackBerry that can’t read email. And needs to be tethered to a phone.

“We feel a technology preview is just the thing we need to fight iPhone and Android in the consumer market,” said founder and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis. “The missing core functionality should be seen as areas of spectacular potential. Also, the board has ascertained that you should stay away from the brown acid, it’s not so good.”

The PlayBook has launched remarkably, with thousands of the devices being recalled for crippling operating system bugs straight after release.

In a double-tap Osborne through the head, the PlayBook uses the new QNX BlackBerry OS, which does not run current BlackBerry apps, will not be available on phones for another year and will not work on any current BlackBerry device. This is separate from OS 7, to be released soon, which will also not work on any existing BlackBerry. RIM’s present mobile carrier partners were “overwhelmed” to be stuck with so much already-obsolete stock.

RIM led the world into the smartphone era, several years before Apple’s iPhone turned everyone into the sort of twat you only ever used to see carrying a BlackBerry.

Technology industry rumours suggest a Microsoft takeover of RIM, considered an excellent match in competence and vision. “Synergy’s just another word for two and two makes one!” said Steve Ballmer. “We will assimilate your technological stench of death into our own.”

People still buy blackberries?

[Gothmolly]

Wow, RIM is still around?

Re:People still buy blackberries?

[Anonymous Coward]

RIM is still one of the best choices in the enterprise world and it'll be a while before that ever changes. Apple and Google are still playing catch-up with everything that BES provides.

Your average phone user is gonna want the latest greatest iOS/Android device that can do all sorts of neat things.

Your average business is going to want a device that's rock solid reliable that keeps their employees in sync. Blackberry was designed for enterprise and they still hold their own in that market. I have Android/iOS/Blackberry devices and I can honestly say I still prefer Blackberry's messaging over everything else.

Re:People still buy blackberries?

[Bert64]

The "enterprise" market is a boring one... You get boring, corporate-grey products... And your company will get a reputation for providing boring products that are only used at work. Devices will always be old, and have be several years behind in features.
The margins won't be great either, companies refresh their hardware slowly and will always look to save money.

Re:People still buy blackberries?

[stewbacca]

RIM is still one of the best choices in the enterprise world and it'll be a while before that ever changes.

Or one more Blackberry outage (this week) oughta do the trick.

Re:People still buy blackberries?

[UBfusion]

Three days ago the BBC had a story about "Why is Indonesia so in love with the Blackberry?". Three million users there and rising.

Re:People still buy blackberries?

[tcr]

It's worth noting that companies like VMware are working on virtualization technology for Android. This would allow handsets to switch between work and home OS images, allowing consumer handsets to be used during work time as secure corporate handsets.

It's possible this could become attractive to the enterprise... no BES, and you can repurpose equipment the employee already owns.

The brown RIM

[Anonymous Coward]

Plunging, sinking, and expanding...

Lack of open software/hardware standards

[DemonGenius]

With companies like RIM offering their own mobile hardware and OS, they leave themselves vulnerable to being irrelevant against whoever happens to be the biggest fish in town for the year. Android handset manufacturers have it a bit better with a common OS, but they still have to churn out a new device practically every few months to remain relevant. I'm in no way an Apple fan and have bought none of their products, but they seem to be the only player who gets how to remain relevant by having standardized hardware and a standardized OS, which equates to a standardized user experience, much closer to how it is with PCs. Only problem with Apple is that they are only in it for themselves and do not like the idea of giving their users true choice.

What we need now is the creation of standardized and open handset form factors and open handset hardware which is also to a degree standardized. I'd really like to see a revolution in handset hardware similar to when the ATX form factor was introduced for PCs. Companies like RIM, Apple, Samsung, Google, Nokia, etc. would have so much to offer the industry if they all play on a more even playing field. I'd prefer this to seeing companies like RIM fail and have their customer base give more market share to other companies that directly oppose the direction mobile devices should take.

Re:Lack of open software/hardware standards

[CrackedButter]

As an iOS user, what is this 'true choice' you speak of, enlighten me.

Re:Lack of open software/hardware standards

[iluvcapra]

What we need now is the creation of standardized and open handset form factors and open handset hardware which is also to a degree standardized.

The Android platform is a defacto hardware standard. This hardware really isn't that sophisticated -- ARM cores, common chipsets, Android can be made to run on an iPhone after all, there's really no barrier to a manufacturer, as long as they use ARM.

Android handset manufacturers have it a bit better with a common OS, but they still have to churn out a new device practically every few months to remain relevant. [...] Only problem with Apple is that they are only in it for themselves and do not like the idea of giving their users true choice.

"Churning out" a new device every few months is the way manufacturers provide "true choice." You can either buy the 4G phone with a kickstand and an undeleteable Blockbuster app, or a Sprint phone with a hardware keyboard and is locked to Eclair, or a slider with MOTOBLUR. And none of these ever get their software updated without an act of congress, thus justifying the next phone in the churn cycle. Behold consumer choice.

Apple succeeds at remaining relevant, as you say, probably because their product and platform maps to consumer demand very well, and their platform doesn't try to recreate the, uh, "dynamism and competition" of the Wintel PC market, circa 1995 (an era in the history of computing I would consider one big, abominable mistake). Of course Apple is "only in it for themselves," unlike the well-known altruists at Samsung and Google.

Re:Lack of open software/hardware standards

[gilesjuk]

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.

Re:Lack of open software/hardware standards

[iluvcapra]

Or, sorry to beat around the bush, but, I think it's arguable that it's simply not possible to offer cellphone handsets on a generic hardware platform, with PC hardware competition, diversity and profit margins, and a 2nd-party OS that is written and steered by its own agendas (open or otherwise), while at the same time making a phone that actually addresses people's wants and needs as well as something that just comes, complete and full integrated, of a vertical assembly line. This certainly seems to be the tack HP has taken with WebOS and Motorola may still take. It's not working for RIM but RIM's been simply making a subpar product for the last several years. People seem to like the Nexus phones best, there's a reason for that -- Google gets so much say over them they really aren't 3rd party phones anymore.

For mass market desktop PCs or laptops, vertical integration hasn't historically been as sustainable (Apple does it now but wasn't always so lucky), and observing that a vertically-integrated, single-sourced phone platform can address people's needs better isn't the same as saying closed computing addresses peoples needs better than open computing, or that Apple now has a free hand to take over the world, or that tyranny wins. These are over-generalizations based on the flawed idea that a phone is "just a computer."

It's not like we offer open hardware platforms for things like radios or washing machines, letting different vendors and partners construct them as they please and enabling the end user easy hacking -- an appliance toaster from Krupp and no one else will always beat an Android toaster with user-customizable filaments. Just because a phone is a little computer doesn't mean people need or want it to do everything on their desk does, and any compromise made to chase the desktop ideal can weigh the products down against integrated competition.

Re:Lack of open software/hardware standards

[afidel]

Funny comment considering my Sprint EVO Shift just downloaded Gingerbread this morning =)

Re:Lack of open software/hardware standards

[narcc]

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.

Their strength in business isn't email, it's incredibly secure email (among other things). Personally, I thought the lack of native email was a great idea -- just link it to my already-secure and managed phone. No need to manage another device. You can share devices between team-members and each one gets instant access to their data, and their data alone.

It seemed like a smart and sensible decision to me. Who knew the tech-press would stomp all over it?

On the 3G issues. Who needs 3G when you can just use your phones existing data plan? (Meh to 3G in any case. Wi-Fi only tablets outsell their 3G counterparts.)

It seems like just business win after business win: No need to manage another device, seamlessly share devices between team members, and no need to pay for an additional data plan. It's added portability is just icing on a very tempting business tablet cake.

As for usability, the UI is ... amazing. I don't know that I've seen any serious criticisms, or could even identify a fault. The only think I could come up with was that a few of the bezel gestures needed to be learned (the swipe up to turn on, the swipe down for menu. Of course, those seem obvious once you've seen them.)

I did watch a video of a 2-year old using the PB like she was a pro, even effortlessly multi-tasking.

Re:Lack of open software/hardware standards

[iluvcapra]

Gingerbread WAS released over six months ago :)

Re:Lack of open software/hardware standards

[RespekMyAthorati]

So how come it failed so spectacularly? And don't try to blame the "tech-press". They only reflect what their users are saying.

What it comes down to, assuming the advantages that you list are true, is that RIM greatly overestimated how many people like you there are.

Re:Lack of open software/hardware standards

[afidel]

Not really, the Nexus was the first phone to get it and that was less than 4 months ago.

Re:Lack of open software/hardware standards

[PipsqueakOnAP133]

Um, no. My Nexus S came with it out of the box December last year. Source code was available then too.

Palm 2.0

[WoTG]

I've always thought of RIM as Palm Pilot, the next generation. The same people who bought the first PDA's from Palm were the first to use Black Berries. Carrying contacts and calendars around was, and is, a very good thing. But, when Black Berries did that, plus email, Palm's weren't competitive anymore. It took awhile, but Palm has all but disappeared (I know, Palm is now buried in HP somewhere.)

Well, email on a phone isn't a big selling feature anymore. It's all about the apps and web access. Email is just the bare minimum - a minimum that RIM couldn't even meet on their Playbook tablet launch (WTF!?)

So... as a Canadian, I'm sad to see RIM's decline. The game isn't over yet, there's still value in the Enterprise and Government sectors... for a while anyway. But, I think their days as a consumer brand are numbered. There really isn't room for 4 platforms in the mobile space... even 3 platforms is pushing it. iOS and Android are here for at least the medium term. Windows Phone and RIM have to fight it out for a distant #3.

If I had to bet, within 5 years, Microsoft will buy either all of RIM, or the pieces - both largely serve the corporate markets.

So....

[Anonymous Coward]

Lazaridis and Balsillie is that of you?

The good, the bad, and ugly

[UnknowingFool]

The good: RIM is still profitable making $695M and had $700M more revenue. They have nearly $2B in cash with $13B overall assets.

The bad: They made $769M profit same time last year while taking in less revenue so they are not growing in terms of profit. The PlayBook sold only 500K. Apple sold 3.27M iPads in slightly more than the first quarter it was available when it launched last year.

The ugly: Besides the delays and layoffs, does the management think newer hardware will solve their problems.

Re:The good, the bad, and ugly

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't *sell* 500K PlayBooks, they *shipped* 500K PlayBooks into the sales channel. There's a big difference there. Considering they wouldn't reveal how many they actually sold, I'm guessing it's a number far lower than 500K.

Re:The good, the bad, and ugly

[xswl0931]

RIM shipped 500k Playbooks, not sold

Bitcoin?

[bigsexyjoe]

This story needs a nice bitcoin tie-in. For example, what is the values of RIM in bitcoin?

Re:Bitcoin?

[turkeyfeathers]

In the long run, RIM and bitcoin will tend towards the same value.

Never did get why ..

[wisnoskij]

They just kept releasing a bunch of basically identical models or why their profits would fall that far simply because a BB with a new outter shell was not released for a few months.

Did anyone read that as "RMS Struggles Continue"?

[Rene S. Hollan]

Just wondering.

Re:Did anyone read that as "RMS Struggles Continue

[gehrehmee]

That was my first reading too.

Good riddance to bad rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously their server infrastructure stuff is a nightmare, how can it use over a gig of ram to just pass along emails and a few phone settings. The months of support delay for mail server versions, patches and service packs don't help either.

Look at it

[joh]

RIM could have ported their software to iOS, Android, WebOS or WP7 and just stopped making their own hardware and OS. The real value of RIM is not in the phones -- it's the IP, the software and the customers they have. There's real value and money in the enterprise market but nobody really cares very strongly about which phone RIM sells. Having a choice of phones with a common software/apps/protocols stack for secure messaging would have been not a bad thing.

Now there's a chance that someone buys them or they having to do a Nokia sooner or later. Accepting the unavoidable earlier would have been better.

Or RIM is saved by the PlayBook. Even trying this is madness, I would say.

Re:Look at it

[Lehk228]

if anything they should do the opposite and launch a line of android blackberries, faster spec'd phones with the blackberry keyboard running android OS, also include some sort of open architecture TPM so IT departments can enforce data security with the new phones just like they can with blackberries.

Re:Look at it

[CharlyFoxtrot]

No one at RIM is dumb enough to trust Apple, Google or Microsoft. If they went that way it'd be just be a matter of time before they were replaced by one of those companies' own service or became no more than one of many competing services on an OS they couldn't control. The likes of Apple certainly wouldn't allow an application to hook so deep into the OS to allow things like remote wipe, Android would necessitate development of many different tweaks for all the different hardware/OS version/operator combinations (death by a million pinpricks) and nobody ever came out on top trusting MS.

Re:Look at it

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the Moto Droid Pro?

Re:Look at it

[runningduck]

Do people really like the BlackBerry keyboards? Really??? I have to carry a BlackBerry and I find the keyboard to be poorly designed and difficult to use. I can type faster and more accurately on my wife's iPod Touch. Don't give me the, "you get used to the size," line. I also use a Palm Pixi. Its keyboard is about 15% smaller than the BlackBerry and I can whale out messages on that tiny keyboard. As a matter of fact, everybody plays with my Pixi for a few seconds comments in amazement at how nice the keyboard is, especially compared to the BlackBerry keyboards.

As an aside, RIP Pixi. I don't know what HP was thinking replacing the candy bar phone with what is effectively a Pre-Mini.

Re:Look at it

[narcc]

Do people really like the BlackBerry keyboards? Really???

Yes. They're the best on the market. They have been for years. Their best effort to date is the keyboard on their Bold line.

I have to carry a BlackBerry and I find the keyboard to be poorly designed and difficult to use.

You're alone on that one. Even people who hate BB readily admit that it has the best keyboard around. Even the Droid Pro keyboard is a blatant copy (though it's more on-par with the torch, it's not nearly as good as the bold keyboard).

also use a Palm Pixi. Its keyboard is about 15% smaller than the BlackBerry and I can whale out messages on that tiny keyboard. As a matter of fact, everybody plays with my Pixi for a few seconds comments in amazement at how nice the keyboard is, especially compared to the BlackBerry keyboards.

The pixi keyboard is nice -- which is amazing considering how bad the keyboard on the Pre was. I think what people really like is the 'click' you get from it, not that it's particularly easy to use, but more 'satisfying' if you catch my meaning. Still, I have no explanation for how you can use it well, and still struggle with a BB keyboard.

Hell, I don't even need to look at my BB keyboard to type.

RIM is outmatched

[Flector]

on all sides

"co-chief" executive

[komissar]

the words "co" and "chief" are mutually exclusive when applied to "executive." that's their first problem.

I think I've heard this story before

[bobstreo]

Technical company with large installed base gets lazy and stupid.
Examples:
Palm
Nokia
Rim
Companies that did a 360 on their products and did OK:
Motorola

With some of the new stuff coming out for smartphones like the Iphone and Androids, RIM phones are becoming less
relevant by the minute.

Re:I think I've heard this story before

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies that did a 360 on their products

Wait, wouldn't doing a 360 mean they were right back where they started?

Re:I think I've heard this story before

[aristotle-dude]

Companies that did a 360 on their products and did OK:
Motorola

Are you trying to quote Tony Vivaldi? http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0010514/

I think you mean that they did a 180. Doing a 360 would put you back in the same direction as if you stood still.

Re:I think I've heard this story before

[Karlt1]

Companies that did a 360 on their products and did OK:
Motorola

1. I think you meant 180
2. Motorola is far from doing "okay"

http://www.forbes.com/2011/04/29/mobile-earnings-after-the-bell-motorola-mobility-holdings-research-in-motion-marketnewsvideo.html

HW focus = fail

[Anonymous Coward]

By focusing blame on the hardware, RIM is guaranteed to fail. The HW is relatively straight-forward to update. Their biggest weakness is their legacy mobile OS and inability to attract as many developers as Apple or Google. They focused almost exclusively on the 'boring' business market and are now paying the price.

Developers Developers Developers Developers

[munky99999]

Developers Developers Developers Developers say what you will about Ballmer's stability but he's dead on. Developers drive platforms. Before Android you had essentially RIM vs Apple and Apple was moderately more open. Guess where all the developers went? Now Android came along and they are basically bending over backwards trying to get as many developers as possible and because of it they have become the largest market share.

If Developers are on a fence between android and RIM. RIM is smeegol in the corner saying "my precious blackberry nobody will touch you but me my precious." while android is on the other side of the fence screaming "come over here damnit come over here. free gadgets, free laptops, android everything."

If RIM wants to make a comeback.. they need to get some new revolutionary patent(prob isnt going to happen) or they need to be as open as android. Which basically means open source through and through. Which in my opinion isnt going to happen unless the executives all get fired.

Over Analysis

[stewbacca]

The media is seriously over analyzing RIM's woes. It takes 5 minutes of hands-on use to see that Blackberries are woefully behind iPhones and Android devices.

Re:Over Analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

the playbook is hardly behind ios/android as far as core technology goes. polish and ecosystem - yeah, but then it is a new OS so it should be expected.

Re:Over Analysis

[narcc]

The media is seriously over analyzing RIM's woes. It takes 5 minutes of hands-on use to see that Blackberries are woefully behind iPhones and Android devices.

Funny, It also takes about 5 minutes of real-world use to see that iPhones and (most) Android devices are woefully inadequate for messaging and any task involving text.

Yeah, the keyboard and trackpad make all the difference. The Droid Pro tried with it's blackberry-clone keyboard, but without that trackpad selecting text and positioning the cursor is just an exercise in frustration.

Sure, they're lagging in the hardware department, but who cares? You gain more from having a boring phone with days of battery life and a UI focused on productivity than you do from having the fastest hardware or the best games.

RIM needs to focus on what it does best and deliver in actual products. This slow-drip of new phones is killing them.

Re:Over Analysis

[stewbacca]

It's not the hardware, it's the OS and the UI. The things are like horse and buggies in a flying car era.

I couldn't care less about physical keys, unless they are on at least a laptop sized keyboard, because no tiny physical keyboard lets me touch type my usual 95 WMP. So, a virtual keyboard typed with thumbs and a good auto-correct suits --if the market is to be believed-- well, almost everyone.

I find it hard to believe that physical keyboards are such a necessity, given most phones don't have them.

post secondary

[munky99999]

I finished post secondary about 1 year ago and I had a person helping me find a job and she points out RIM is hiring like 5000 people a year that I should apply there. I say to her, "Android is going to explode in popularity and because of it RIM is going to lose market share heavily and 1 year from now RIM is going to start firing people and since their mentality is so proprietary and closed source they wont change and wont recover unless a miracle." 1 year is almost upon us and I was right.

The reality is that place is like area 51. You go there and you need to swipe ID basically everywhere you go, you could hide the stanley cup inside there and it would go missing for a very long time. A business like this isnt an open business and isnt going to be changing anytime soon unless the highest level execs get fired.

Don't worry about RIM

[ControlsGeek]

Apple has problems, Just started re-calling the Ipad 2 . Remember Apple? That little company with 2 CEO's ? Now has one left and He's on his last legs?

The Iphone 4 was a real problem they never really solved the antenna issue. And now Samsung is cloning the next generation.

Android ? Just a hackers wet dream.

Get serious.

Re:Don't worry about RIM

[Flector]

Apple still thinks people can type on flat screens and only need one battery per device.

Slahsdot is the best!!!1111!!

[kvvbassboy]

I have visited OSNews a few times, and the readership there is decent, albeit not as good as slashdot. However, when it comes to news about Microsoft, I definitely prefer reading the articles and comments there. Slashdot has too many trolls, $hills and fanbois. Not everybody mind you, but it's not as easy to find unbiased opinions.

Re:Slahsdot is the best!!!1111!!

[tyrione]

I have visited OSNews a few times, and the readership there is decent, albeit not as good as slashdot. However, when it comes to news about Microsoft, I definitely prefer reading the articles and comments there. Slashdot has too many trolls, $hills and fanbois. Not everybody mind you, but it's not as easy to find unbiased opinions.

OSNews is nothing but a cesspool of wannabe tech know-it-all tools who like Slashdot despise Apple's successes and are tired of everyone slamming Windows, but at the same time keep proclaiming Linux will finally have it's break out year, Qt is the shit of all shit, Gnome isn't cool anymore, and with all that self-proclaimed genius they represent nothing in the real world.

QNX's Neutrino is used for more than phones

[Anonymous Coward]

Google or other tech companies could scoop up QNX, the software company behind the PlayBook tablet computer, and RIMâ(TM)s BBM messaging platform.

I am still shaking my head on the RIM purchase. Actually, I was shaking my head when Harman bought them. Neutrino continues to find use in products in the medical, aerospace, rail and automobile transit, computer networking, and defense comminucation and weapon markets. I am not exactly sure why a Google would want QNX since most of their business from embedded licenses are in industries Google has no presence. The mobile phone market is puny for QNX.

Android Blackberry

[Daniel Phillips]

RIM could look at two options: 1) introduce an Android Blackberry or 2) slowly wither and die. Bifurcation, you bet.

Android

[xswl0931]

Google bought Android. They didn't write it themselves.

Re:Android

[Anonymous Coward]

Google bought Android. They didn't write it themselves.

Source?

Wikipedia says that Google bought a company called Android, Inc. (which had been working on building software for mobile phones, but hadn't released anything) in 2005, and announced "Android" the mobile platform in 2007.

Re:Android

[Anonymous Coward]

Source?

Wikipedia says that Google bought a company called Android, Inc. (which had been working on building software for mobile phones, but hadn't released anything) in 2005, and announced "Android" the mobile platform in 2007.

Sorry, not everything in life will be spelled out for you. Just keep thinking about it until the dots connect.

finalized?

[mevets]

Not sure that is actually a word, but have a peek at:
http://www.qnx.com/company/30ways

QNX has been around, and literally around you, for a long time.

disclaimer: former employee.

Re:finalized?

[errandum]

http://www.google.com/search?q=finalized - yes, it is a word.

Never said it hasn't, but RIM's "port" seems to be taking it's time and most of the features promised are still just that - promises.

Blackberry is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

The best thing for RIM right now is to abandon the blackberry phone platform. They need to either customize the Android OS, or make an "app" to tie Android OS phones into their still powerful BES platform, offering all the features of BES to an Android handset. and than sell that ontop of someone else's phones.

BS article written by pirates hoping to cheat

[Anonymous Coward]

evil speculators devalue a company they can't compete with, so that they can buy it, and its assets for pennies on the dollar .... sound familiar America?

the overly affluent are completely evil, clearly they can't make an honest buck so they must cheat, lie and steal

RIM will never fail. Canadian pride is at stake!

[RubberDogBone]

RIM is kind of a matter of national pride in Canada. It's sort of their Apple, a company they are immensely proud of and so on and so forth.

The Canadian government would probably step in to keep the company going and also to block any sale to a foreign buyer, particularly an American buyer. There is no way they will allow an HP or Microsoft to come in and swallow the company and surely terminate a vast number of Canadian workers. A whole ecosystem has been built around RIM, their suppliers and contractors and it feeds into schools and is the foundation for a lot of the high-tech industries in and around Waterloo. RIM is the flagship. The champion team.

Perhaps they could sell out to a non-US buyer like Lenovo or HTC or whatever but those companies don't exactly need anything RIM has. I am not sure anyone "needs" what RIM has -after all, they're all already competing and doing well in many cases. Perhaps a main reason to buy RIM would be to shut it down and gut the IP. There is no way the Canadian government would allow a wholesale gutting.

But the stock price is certainly not assuring at the moment.

I do find it relatively interesting that any story about RIM or Blackberry or the Playbook where user comments are allowed is invariably full of comments that utterly sing the praises of the company. They are usually way out of proportion to any negative comments, and usually any negative comment is directly addressed and challenged post for post. Nothing goes unchallenged. I never, ever see this for anyone else, not for Apple or Microsoft or anyone. My suspicion is that RIM is actively seeking out those sorts of comment forums and perhaps encouraging positive messages. OK I will just say it: I think they are paying people to do this. And they are rather clumsy and obvious at it. No, no proof, of course.

RIM, this is nice and all that you apparently care what people think and want to challenge them, but still does not fix the actual problems. Whether you want to admit they are there or not, astroturfing on forums is not the answer. The stock price is controlled by more than the comments on forums.

They can't compete in the consumer market until...

[s7uar7]

I know RIM's main target market is business, but if they want to compete with Apple and Android in the consumer market they've got to stop making BIS compulsory. It's a mandatory cost that makes plans £60/year more expensive than a comparable plan with an iOS or Android phone. My mail connection to Google is already secure, I don't need an extra layer of RIM encryption.

Re:RIM makes BlackBerry that can’t read emai

[iampiti]

Man, I really love this kind of comments. I've seen a few like this of yours. I think you're a nice writer. Do you do any writing professional or otherwise? You should.

Re:RIM will never fail. Canadian pride is at stake

[narcc]

I do find it relatively interesting that any story about RIM or Blackberry or the Playbook where user comments are allowed is invariably full of comments that utterly sing the praises of the company.

Except this one ... and all of the other slashdot stories proclaiming the death of RIM. Are you new here?

They are usually way out of proportion to any negative comments, and usually any negative comment is directly addressed and challenged post for post.

Except this one ... and all of the other slashdot stores about RIM.

Nothing goes unchallenged. I never, ever see this for anyone else, not for Apple or Microsoft or anyone.

Really? You've not see the point-counter point on EVERY Apple article for the past few years? How about the flame-wars in the comments section of nearly every Android article?

My suspicion is that RIM is actively seeking out those sorts of comment forums and perhaps encouraging positive messages. OK I will just say it: I think they are paying people to do this. And they are rather clumsy and obvious at it. No, no proof, of course.

Well, if they're paying people to shill on forums, they're doing a horrible job. Perhaps the relatively few pro-RIM posts stick-out among the same repeated-to-death posts you see on every RIM story? Perhaps when you read "RIM needs to adopt andriod" (stupid, BTW) fifty times, you start to think of it as just one post.

Re:RIM will never fail. Canadian pride is at stake

[Anonymous Coward]

"RIM is kind of a matter of national pride in Canada. It's sort of their Apple, a company they are immensely proud of and so on and so forth."

Just like Nortel.

Where's the Gasoline

[Anonymous Coward]

when I need it, because I'd like to pour some on the fire that's consuming RIM.

The devices and apps themselves don't bother me that much (though I've never cared for the form factor). It's the Blackberry culture I absolutely despise. Show me a Blackberry addict and I'll show you someone with an attention span so short you need an electron microscope to measure it. They never listen to anything anyone else is saying, constantly interrupt meetings with some inane crap like the latest Tweet from Ashton Kutcher, and don't have the mental capacity to process information that can't be handled by the medulla oblongata. XKCD jokes about the zombie apocalypse that will one day destroy the world, but I believe it's already happened and that Blackberry is to blame.

License your apps!

[saleenS281]

RIM should've licensed out and/or sold directly via the app stores their email, calendar, and BBM clients. They could've dominated the entire market. Now people have gotten used the the lackluster exchange support offered by android and IOS, and have likely learned to just deal with it. They could continue to sell plenty of blackberry units for their encryption capabilities (likely the only stronghold they currently have), while also dominating other markets. I would absolutely pay for a RIM app to replace the trash offered by IOS and android. Email search alone would make it worth it.

Ars Technica

[Santana]

Try Ars Technica. Really.

RIM for the Cloud! (the independent one, I mean)

[Herve5]

While things may well turn exactly the way you describe, I see the situation quite differently.

To me the Playbook happens to be the last independent platform in front of Apple/Google duopoly*.

And just for that reason, I'll buy one as soon as they are available here in France.

That less applications are available on it is almost a non-issue to me. Time is now to the Cloud, as they say, which is even more monopolistically gobbled by Google/Apple.

In that area I am intensively searching for php/mysql apps that I, independently, can install in reasonable cooperative server hosts, of which many do exist but only propose ridiculous "your site here" services for now.
I already have been using for years calendars, wikis, document hosting; I recently discovered a bayesian-filtering RSS aggregator that's really punchy --and none of them needs anything more than a good browser.

Because RIM has an excellent experience in establishing safe links between servers and devices, I believe it is at least imaginable that they offer this for precisely the kind of "independent cloud apps" I am dreaming for.

That's why I definitely will drop my $500 or so, whenever I see a Palybook here.

I can do this, I can't do more. I won't cry of I lose the bet.

H.

(*) I believed for some time in the Wetab, http://wetab.mobi/en --even though it really had all the German technical impetus behind it, in the end it was clear that one newcomer just coundn't fund it all, and the resulting quality showed poor. In contrast, yes RIM can ;-)