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An Inside Look At the Rise and Fall of RIM
zacharye writes with this excerpt from BGR:
"Research In Motion is in the midst of a major transition in every sense of the word. Publicly, the company is portraying a very defensive image — one that is very dismissive, as if RIM is profitable and class-leading, and the media is out of line to criticize its business, as are investors. Internally, however, there's a different story to be told. It's a story filled with attitude, cockiness, heated arguments among the executive team and Co-CEOs, and paranoia. ... The three-year roadmap for RIM products focused on refining the technology in phones had already been released, rather than looking at where to add major new componentry or trying to identify or even shape future trends. 'One of the main reasons RIM missed the mark with the browser was because
they were always proud of how little data usage a user would use,' a former executive said. 'There was no three-year plan at RIM.'"
RIM was cool back in the day when data was super-expensive. They came up with a then-innovative end-to-end service to cut data consumption to a trickle.
Those days are over, people want streaming video, full email, full browsers, etc. on their phones.
Trolling is a art,
Arrogance rarely wins, why is it so popular?
Nope, to RIM 1 or 2 MB a month is normal data usage, “RIM would be proud of the fact that someone would only use 1MB of data in a month in 2005."
"Mike is convinced people won’t buy an iPhone because battery life isn’t as good as a BlackBerry,” a different source said. Mike apparently is in disbelief that people can use over 15GB of data on their iPhone and Android devices,"
So this genius at RIM is so much in denial that he doesn't get that Apple is cutting away at RIM while Android and iOS are raping RIM because he doesn't understand the market anymore.
Droid is a race to the bottom. Why go with something you will be racing against JustStartedCompanyYesterday Corp. for slim or no profits?
RIM needs to do what Jobs did to next in the mid 1990s. It's time for them to accept that their phone business is cooked. Nobody is waiting a week out in front of any stores to buy a RIM device. Nobody even knows what differentiates one device from another. It's 2011, not 1991, cellphone sets are widespread and the market has spoken, nobody wants a RIM phone.
RIM needs to get out of the hardware business, and port their mail reader to an application and sit on top of android, iOS, and Windows mobile (lol).
They need to focus on making BES suck less, and getting their application into as many hands as possible.
Loose the hardware, nobody will miss it.
I read the first paragraphs and then skimmed further into it. What I got was "RIM started out well but then didn't really do anything new or good after that."
Okay, let's be clear on what RIM and Blackberry are and what they are not. RIM and Blackberry are about business. They target business users and cater to the needs of business. What they are not and never have been is a pop consumer devices. Many of the comments were targeting recent trends in phones such as iPhone and Android and the like. As much as I like my Samsung Galaxy phone, it's a consumer device just as the iPhone is. Both can be retrofitted with "needed business features" but from its core to its shell, RIM and Blackberry are business first and foremost.
RIM is not going anywhere just yet. They have their place. Business and government want central control and management of their infrastructure and Blackberry can be used as an extension of their infrastructure in ways that others do not... not yet anyway. (And I presume some of that is based on patents held by RIM.)
And I am rather disappointed that people these days are unable to look down the road or even back up the road where they came from. I think market trends are good to watch as it is an indicator of what works, what doesn't, what's long-term and what isn't. The iPhone/Android battle makes the market exciting. It's a catalyst for change and improvement... or it would be if it weren't for every business with an "on the internet" patent trying to sue one another to death. It's certainly very lively, I'm sure all will agree. But moving at a rapid pace when you already have a steady market niche would present further risk to RIM that isn't really present for the likes of Apple, HTC or Samsung.
While Android and iPhone are used in many business environments, only Blackberry doesn't compromise the sovereignty of the business over its data. Apple wants to control all iPhones and the apps that go on them. Android is anarchy. Blackberry provides tools of control and configurability to business over even those of the phone carrier. (For example, using a BES, I was able to turn on tethering for a phone whose carrier did not permit it.) This is important to business people who understand the difference. (Unfortunately, since executives are prone to buying the pie-in-the-sky "cloud" idea for everything, what business people are willing to understand is demonstrably limited.)
The basic notions that made Blackberry great from the beginning are still valid today. The things I see happening in the industry right now is a lot of glitz and eye candy but not so much in the way of new ideas. RIM isn't making a lot of noise right now, but they don't have to. If RIM wanted to play in the Android market or to create yet another line of phones, they would do so at the peril of their core market. If I were RIM and felt it were necessary, I would create a new brand and not call it Blackberry at all so that people would know the difference. RIM has something that no one else has and they need to stay with it.
Reasons RIM is circling the drain:
#1 - You used to have two options: Desktop Redirector or on-server redirector. Desktop Redirector "worked" but was otherwise always Pure Fucking Crap, and required that your home or work desktop be on 24/7 and that you be logged in to it with the program running. On-server redirector worked a hell of a lot better, didn't require a running PC, but ate up a ton of server horsepower, required some pretty arcane setup, and cost an arm and a leg to license.
Now, you can do the same damn thing on a Droid or iOS phone with Outlook, Google, or a hundred other options... at no extra cost beyond the server.
#2 - Attachments. Back in the day, Crackberries had "a few apps" and could occasionally read a text-file or really, really freaking small attachment (again, only on server: desktop redirector didn't "do" attachments). Now, I can load and read virtually any attached document on a Droid or iOS phone.
#3 - Apps. Face it, the amount of stuff I can load onto my Droid phone is incredible... more to the point, useful. RIM, meanwhile, has made programming for even their newest phones so arcane that developers who were gung-ho on the platform initially have thrown their hands up in disgust and walked away.
#4 - Hubris, Hubris, Hubris.The only reason RIM is even still alive is that it's going to take another year and a half for people who are "locked in" to a free-handset contract with their phone provider to get out. Meanwhile, we're recommending to every person that comes in wanting help with their blackberry that when the time comes, they should really strongly consider looking at the iOS or Droid phones, that play well with our environment without requiring dozens of hours of tweaking, constant settings resets, and can do a lot more.
Yes, but your users don't have the option of running any of that because RIM hasn't released any of those environments, nor have they provided any hint as to when they might.
I have a PlayBook. It's pretty slick at it's core, but when it has next to no apps, can't do autocorrect, has all sorts of bizarre interface inconsistencies and stalls mysteriously when browsing the web (no, not because of Flash, which is a non-feature, IMO). This article is dead-bang-on in it's analysis of RIM's problems lying with Laziridis' engineering-induced blindness, and the PlayBook is an example of that mindset: hits all the features, has an amazing foundation but is hideously crippled in ways that matter to average people.
When people talk up the PlayBook, it's always "It runs Flash" (yes, it does; it does so better than any other tablet, which is like the old "winning a race at the special olympics" joke) or "It multitasks" (yes, it does, but you're challenged to find more than four apps worth running, and even then the memory management will fall down). That you can't type on it, that it's impossble to mark text, that it has no email client (and Bridge is a glitchy bastard) tell you everything you need to know about how RIM and it's people don't think about what actual consumers want.
It kills me, really. I love the form factor---I wish there was a 7" iPad---and the gestures are brilliant (even though they're not consistent across all apps), but RIM needs to fix this think fast. The problem is that I think they've already moved onto the OS7 phones, which in turn are evolutionary dead ends because a few months after that there's supposed to be QNX phones. I suppose, in a year, the PlayBook might be usable. Maybe.
It reeks of Nokia, actually.
--srj/mmv
Blackberries lock up, and theyre slow, and the browser sucks, but I still would take it any day of the week over an iPhone or even an android (unless they release a Galaxy S with a decent battery and a better keyboard...). Why?
1) The keyboards are always phenomenal. I can take notes on a blackberry quite well, keeping pace with a speaker. And the notes are always, automatically synced to the Exchange server, so I dont even have to worry about backups.
2) Battery life is phenomenal compared to Android power-devices. If the thing doesnt last through 8 hours of talking and data usage, then its worthless to me. Most days I dont use it quite that much, but others Im on the phone all day.
3) Keyboard shortcuts are phenomenal. It is trivial to fly around the menus on my Bold, compose a mail, copy/paste, bookmark and all the rest. Very little fiddling with menus.
4) BES is king. Active-sync is nice, and has its pros (like not needing yet another server and yet 2 more GB of RAM), but it also has a lot of cons-- certificate woes, iPhone woes (where it simply refuses to connect, even if the certs are all correct-- could be any number of things), lack of manageability, and not as many things are synced. Its getting better all the time, but BES still has fewer issues, easier deployment, better security, and more management options. And the new 5.0 BES has a web-management interface which (despite being ActiveX-style crufty) is great-- allows you do manage which public folders you sync, lets you do backups, etc.
If your idea of a smartphone is occasionally getting some emails and doing phone calls, sure, get an iPhone or Android. Some of the folks in my office have iPhones, and love them in general. But if you (like me) find yourself typing email on your phone even if theres a computer nearby, you really want to use a Blackberry. Theyre wonderful for business use, and I think it would be a mistake for RIM to start catering to home users-- theyll never beat iPhone at that game. The strength of a Blackberry is productivity.
So this genius at RIM is so much in denial that he doesn't get that Apple is cutting away at RIM while Android and iOS are raping RIM because he doesn't understand the market anymore.
Sadly, this type of yesterday thinking permeates most of Fortune 1000 and is what most CEOs aspire to. To be a good CEO today, you need to be able to lie, talk bullshit, and have a two week plan. Period. And oh ya, be on the board of your friend so you can continue to vote for ever higher and completely unjustified salaries and benefits.
Seriously, most CEO's have a plan for tomorrow and maybe the next product release. That's it. If they have a one year plan or hell, even a two or three year plan, its a complete farce and a joke. They have it because its deemed a requirement to have for stock holders, not because they actually believe it or intend to follow it.
American CEOs have been shorting the shit out of the entire country for decades now. Its SOP. Its why so much manufacturing has left the country. In in part why American is sliding from prominence all the while the pay divide has never been larger.
Pragmatically, with no hyperbole, most CEOs should be fired - and justifiably so. Realistically, they get bonuses and higher salaries while destroying the economy around them and anything else if the next guy's problem because their sole job is to short the company, you and me, to day.