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The (Big) Problem With RIM
An anonymous reader writes "Research in Motion, by all accounts, had a terrible week. But things might get even worse. The Canadian technology company posted dismal quarterly earnings numbers, missing revenue and sales targets, while margins continued to shrink. Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis conceded the PlayBook had been thwarted by a lack of apps and content, not necessarily by a weak platform. Like Apple with its iOS, and Microsoft with Windows, creating a successful platform will be dependent on the eco-system it supports, but RIM hasn't shown ability to foster that."
Speculation has begun as to whether or not RIM will wind up having a PlayBook firesale in the same vein as the TouchPad.
RIM's problem is basically same as Nokia's was - their platforms eco-system is practically dead. You cannot find any of the apps or games you want on them. I don't use my phone (old Windows Mobile 6.2) much so I haven't needed that many apps on it, but on those few times that I have had a need for something, it really sucks when the apps are only available for the big three - iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7. This is true for even such known programs as Skype (I actually did find some old WM6.2 Skype version, but the voice quality sucks with that version).
Where RIM is failing here again is just trying to get their own system out. There's just too many platforms. Hell, even on PC's most companies only make their products available for Windows and maybe OS X. They cannot compete with iOS at this point, and while a little bit better, Android has the same kind of fragmentation problems (though to a lesser degree). In my opinion RIM should go with Windows Phone 7. As RIM is mostly used by business people, they would even get Office and Exchange directly to it. Perfect for businesses.
I had a curve 8330 and predicted this years ago.
They had a funny policy of only releasing security fixes for their OS, meanwhile leaving out features that should have been in it from the beginning.
Simple things like being able to autosplit text messages, it couldn't do, simply capped you at 160 characters.
Or even being able to adjust the vibrate functionality on a text message notification to buzz once for half a second, had to buy an app for that. Shortest vibrate was 2x 1 second vibrations. Very annoying. Oh, and it couldn't vibrate and ring at the same time for a call. It would start the ringtone and in 5 seconds start the vibrate and kill the ringtone, then just continue vibrating for the duration of the call. Had to buy an app to fix that too.
I don't recall the rest of what they left out. I remember there were at least like 4 things that the OS desperately needed but that they wouldn't put in.
I believe their reasoning was "that way they'll buy the next phone hoping it's better with its newer OS", forgetting the part where if your current customer is annoyed with you, the last thing they're going to do is go buy something else from you. So then I got an android...
Like Palm, these people squandered a multi-year lead. They had a lock on a wonderful customer base and supplied the dominant smartphone-precursor device to the world, and failed to follow up on through an inability to execute. What happened to the original scrappy, farsighted RIM, that created the Blackberry platform to begin with? Gone - eaten up in the ugly process of becoming a large incumbent business. Now they live on inertia, and their management can't execute their way out of a paper bag. An old story, and a common one.
It has been obvious for many months that RIM was a dead letter - not just behind in the race but lapped many times by multiple competitors. I mean, the Playbook? Really? If you weren't short RIM, sue your broker.
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From the "Firesale" article: "Keep in mind that these prices are in Canadian dollars" - check the exchange rate, 1USD buys you about 98 cents Canadian. The US dollar is now less valuable than the Canadian dollar. I got the impression the author is still assuming the opposite is true.
1) Perception: With RIM failing to release a touch screen device at most a few months after the iPhone, they were perceived as a dinosaur in making, especially by the young folks. Google did it with HTC and nobody can say it's been a liability to them.
2) Pride: Whenever one would ask them about the looming competition from iOS & Android, they would quickly dismiss those concerns with statements pointing to their 'solid' financial positions at the time. Little did they acknowledge that it would be a matter of time before iOS and Android started to 'eat their lunch', after-all these platforms were not static when it came to development.
3) Strategic vision, or the lack of it: A competent CEO would have [quietly] used the available Android code at the time to develop a 'mock device' for defensive purposes using internal resources. RIM did not. During times like these, they would simply 'out' a mock Android device and the market would probably play along.
4) Being Canadian: This characteristic is proving to be disadvantageous. The same thing happened to NORTEL, a once successful company in its field. Ever wondered why Canada is the only industrialized company without a car synonymous with it? Heck, even once communist Russia still has Lada.
For years RIM charged $200 to register as a developer before you could make any apps. Just a few months ago they announced they are "waiving" the fee.
You spent years "waiving" potential developers to other platforms. No one wants to spend $200 on a weekend hobby, and that's what most apps are.
I own a PlayBook. The first thing I wanted to do with it was connect to my work computer (Windows) and remote desktop. Well, PB doesn't support PPTP or L2TP/IPSec, so that won't work. Furthermore, it doesn't have a remote desktop app, further making this impossible. I then tried to connect it to a BlackBerry (I don't own one, but a co-workers does), and it failed. The only way to make it work was to re-flash the device with the same ROM (not a new one.. I don't know why). So, then I could read e-mail, right? Yes, but you can't open attachments... wtf?
I think the above is a good summary of the overall impression people get from BlackBerry. Have you ever tried to use their desktop software for syncing music/etc to their phones? It's ridiculously awful. I actually laughed out loud when I saw it, as it took about 5 minutes just to detect the device and communicate with it. It just leaves a really bad taste in the mouth.
Which brings me to my last point, which is the development environment. For PB, it's not existent.. it's command line. Sorry, but that's not acceptable. I mean, sure, when you first release the device, but now there's still nothing? At least make an eclipse plug-in. For BlackBerry.. well, I've made a few apps for 4.6.0 and above, and it was tragic at best. There are many simple things that are just not available (some graphical markup language anyone?) - the fact that I have to write my GUI in code just reeks of outdated. And then something like connecting to the internet requires re-implementation of connection detection every time.. there's nothing built into the framework to just abstract dealing with the connection away.
I've read quite a few BB developer forums, and they are all fairly negative, or very frustrated. How can they expect a great app eco-system, when they obviously have absolutely no care in the world for their developers?
I ended up with a Playbook from winning a contest just about a year ago. I was super excited to get one -- all the specs were great and it seemed like a winning device. The conference I was at had only one, and they kept it behiend a glass case. They wouldn't let any of the devs touch it, but they handed out Playbook Emulators (software) that you could build apps against. Over the course of the next 4 months, the API changed soo many times, and the Emulator was so buggy that it was almost pointless to develop against it.
From that point, it was 6 months before I got the real device in the mail.
A lot of promises that made the device a best-seller still haven't materilized.
- It was said it was going to ship with the ability to run Android and old BBx Apps.
- It was said that devlopers could develop apps in native QNX. Such an SDK has still not been released, except for a few select partners (I've been a BB developer for YEARS, and thought I could make this list... I guess not).
- There were BB phones that were supposed to be released immediatly after the Playbook that ran QNX. This would allow devs to target one SDK / App development model for both phones and tablets. We have not seen anything about a new QNX phone yet.
- It was said that there would be a version that had GSM/CDMA capabilities coming... It's been bumped off their road map. You can either use WiFi, or tether to an existing BB phone.
- There is no 'smartphone' stuff in there. No Calendar, no Mail, nothing. You can tether to an existing BB phone and emulate some of those things, but if your phone is off, or out of range you loose those apps. Who pays hundreds of dollars and can't check your mail on a device!
- There has been a real lack of business apps. Still no SSH app, still no RDP app. No email, no word processor, etc. These are the things people will notice when they check out the devices in the store. If the developer eco-system wasn't supporting these types of apps, RIM should have whipped them up to fill in the gaps. They didn't, and they still don't exist.
- They've scared off most developers because of the way they run their program. You have to register your device with your program and download a developer 'token' that is only good for 30 days. Every 30 days you need to re-register your device to be able to deploy apps to it. Additionally, you have to bake those tokens into your app, which means that your apps can really only be tested for 30 day windows. To get your tokens approved it can take DAYS. Submitting stuff to the App World is a similar process as Apple, except you get more feedback when your apps get rejected.
Now, all that being said, hardware wise I think the device is REAL nice.. One of the best tablet screens I've ever encountered. I love the gestures (the borders of the device are touch sensitive, and most of the gestures you use with the device orgionate from there). The web browser is really solid, and the multi-tasking works very well. Because of the screen, it's one of the few devices I can read a full newspaper on without having a lot of strain on my eyes. The OS is also beautiful too -- and much better laid out than iOS or Android. The battery lasts about 8 hours of continious use, which is great for a device like that.
That being said -- I don't use it every day. I don't even use it every week because the lack of apps to do my work. At this point, it is a glorified web browser and that's about it. Give me the ability to do my day-to-day job (like I can on the iPad or Samsung tab), and it would be the device to carry around. But not until then.
I didn't understand this myself for ages, it's only in the last couple of years I've figured it out.
The selling point (not just with RIM but with any smartphone/sync combination) is a lot more than just email. There's a whole lot of little things which on their own sound utterly inconsequential - but in actual fact add up to enough that for many people they represent real value:
1. Push email. I know about the IMAP IDLE command. Few smartphones implements this; those that implement IMAP in any form frequently do such a ham-fisted job of it you wonder why they bother.
2. Calendar sync. What exactly do you carry around with you that can vibrate or make noises on schedule to remind you of an appointment and can keep your appointments in sync with a central server so others looking to schedule meetings can ensure they choose a convenient time? You and I have maybe a couple of meetings a week, usually at fixed times and they're often not terribly consequential. Missing one is fairly unlikely (because they're at fixed times) and usually of little consequence. The sales manager (whose job basically consists of "Go to meeting, talk about our product and try to sell it, lather rinse and repeat up to several times a day every day for months on end") doesn't have that luxury.
3. Contacts sync. You and I lose our contacts list on our phone, it's mildly annoying but we're probably organised enough to remember to sync it with out computer occasionally so we can always reload it. Worst case, we lose a handful of contacts - but we're probably not using the phone enough to care about a handful of ultimately inconsequential numbers. The people who are buying these phones: A. aren't that organised and B. depend so heavily on their contacts list that without it they are in serious trouble. Salesmen are again the most obvious example of this.
Arguments 2 and 3 also go some way to explaining the continued popularity of Outlook/Exchange. You care to explain to the sales director that as his laptop has been stolen, the information about upcoming meetings and his contact list has gone with it? Bearing in mind that as soon as you've left the room, that sales director is going to have a very difficult meeting with his manager. I guarantee you the second thing out of his mouth (straight after "Oh dear, it looks like the meetings at which I was hoping to secure £several million worth of sales are scuppered, because I can only remember details of one or two of them. We're going to look pretty bad when I don't even show up.") will be "This never happened at my last company where we had Exchange. If I lost a phone or laptop there, it would be replaced and the replacement would get all this information."
Right. It made sense to buy the Touchpad at fire-sale prices because it was good hardware, had a good web browser, good email and some decent apps. On the other hand, the Playbook doesn't even have a built-in email application that doesn't require tethering to a Blackberry, meaning its pretty much useless as a couch device, and the apps just plain suck.
Forcing people to buy two devices instead of one was a very, very stupid approach
Your understanding is wrong. Playbook works just fine without a BlackBerry over WiFi. It has access to any web-based email system, just no on-device support for Email/Calendar at this point. Currently I believe that currently the PlayBook can use the WiFi hotspot features of an Android phone/iPhone for Internet access while you are away from a WiFi network. During the setup of a playbook, one of the first things you do is set up a WiFi network for it to pull in updates; after that it allows you to set up a bridge to a BlackBerry phone for email/calendar/bbm functionality.
For what it's worth; I do have a Playbook connected to a BlackBerry, and it does continue to work without the phone in range, I just don't have access to my corporate email/calendar/network resources.
How exactly is the GP wrong? PB has no way to go online without some other device to piggyback on. You still need to get another device to actually get online!.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
RIM's major problem is their management. Problems like a lack of apps and whatever other reason you want to put forth all come _after_ RIM's management failed the company. Specifically, their management's lack of vision and ego.
When Apple released the iPhone, the mobile market changed. You may love Apple or you may hate Apple but that doesn't matter - the fact that does matter is that Apple changed everything with the release of the iPhone. Simply look at the vast majority of mobile phones before the iPhone and then look at the vast majority of phones after the iPhone. Everything changed.
Most companies recognized what the iPhone meant to the mobile market and thus they changed. Whether it was to "be more like Apple" or simply because they recognized that Apple was on to something big, the design of phones radically shifted. Specifically, keyboards largely vanished and touch screens were in. Phone makers changed gears.
Except the RIM with the Blackberry.
While everyone else was scrambling to adjust to the new reality in the mobile market, RIM's management steadfastly refused to acknowledge and, more importantly, recognize that things had changed. While even the most casual observer could tell that everything had changed, RIM's management somehow seemed to miss the signs and thus they didn't shift gears. Not until very recently have they begrudgingly released phones that kinda, sorta look and function like a touchscreen phone but, by now, it's too late. Momentum is well and truly swung and, once you get a massive shift in momentum like that, it's virtually impossible to stop it.
RIM's management utterly failed their company. Their inability to adapt to a changing landscape; their inability to recognize that the landscape had changed or their unwillingness to admit that it had; their arrogance in believing that their established client base made them immune to changes in the market all has lead to this point. Their management is ill-equipped to run a mobile device maker because the market demands leadership that can recognize change when it happens and adapt to that change in a timely manner. And, to be clear, when I say "management" I'm largely look right at the very top.
It may be one bad quarter of financials, but they've been hemorrhaging market share since the introduction of the iPhone. The death of a platform isn't something that happens overnight.