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CEOs of RIM Step Down
An anonymous reader writes "After two decades of leading the BlackBerry maker, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balisillie are stepping down from their roles as Co-CEOs at Canada's Research In Motion Limited. Thorsten Heins will now lead RIM as it attempts to beat the likes of Apple and Google."
it seem's the decision they made is about a year too late.
... will now lead the BlackBerry maker as it attempts to beat the likes of Apple and Google
Slow down, slow down, one step at a time. How about we get the company nice and healthy first and work on dominating the industry after that.
"as it attempts to beat the likes of Apple and Google"
A strange choice of words. I think "as it attempts to compete with the likes of..." would be more accurate and desirable - the last thing the technology market needs these days is a single, clearcut winner (at least, if you're a consumer). That aside, as a Canadian I'd like to see RIM survive on its own and if this helps to shake things up then it's a welcome move; I don't fancy the thought of the Samsung chaebol gaining even more power than it already has.
I just don't see that happening. I don't hold great hope for RIM's future, but I just don't think they could limbo under the WP7 bar any time soon.
I actually do. Remember Microsoft still has Windows 8, Windows 8 Tablets, and Xbox 360 to use to push the Windows Phone 7 UI on everyone. All of that could fail... but "could fail" is still better than RIM's "tried it and already failed."
Breakfast served all day!
I guess that'll be the end of RIM. Last year it was REM. What's next? RAM? ROM?
Their will be a lot of snarky "too late" comments today for this news, but it's a sad day when you have to step down from the company you worked so hard to build -- a company that must feel an extension of yourself -- and it must have been a really tough decision for these guys. No doubt they still wanted to prove themselves (and who wouldn't, given their situation?). I feel sorry for them. It's easy to be an armchair CEO, especially when you have hindsight.
still better than RIM's "tried it and already failed."
And being consistent at that !
Write boring code, not shiny code!
How many people understand the difference between pull and push email and how it affects them in the pocket? How many developers understand why Neutrino has advantages over iOS?
A serious marketing department would have launched the Playbook by giving them away to every Android developer who cared to ask for one. They would have spent money in product placement, developed a Curve phone optimised to work with the Playbook, and sold them as a single product so that people "got" the Bridge from day 1. Instead, they launched at far too high a price with a corporate advertisement that nobody understood. People saw the lack of native email as a downside, not seeing that with a BB phone you had one mobile connection that worked both devices. It was a classical launch by engineers who assumed that everybody was as clever as they were.
However, unlike HP, the tablet is pretty good, and there is still market share to lose. Their best bet is to spend marketing money outside the US in the emergent markets and Europe, since they cannot compete with Apple.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
What could we possibly gain from such a thing?
Depends how much you'd enjoy seeing your telcos bent over and squealing like pigs.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Although it isn't certain that Elop will manage to save Nokia, he at least understood that painful changes needed to be made. I'm not sure that Heins understands the dangers that RIM finds itself in though..
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
We already saw that with the iPhone. But that was Apple. Now, as far as telcos are concerned, I don't think Google has had anything to make them bend over and squeak.
Please try again.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
[self-replying]
Just wanted to clarify what I meant by "the field is still changing".
I think that Apple will not increase much further in smartphone market share because Steve Jobs is no longer leading the company. The last time that Steve left Apple things did not go well and the company nearly went under. I don't think Apple is headed downhill yet, but without the visionary man who made the company in the driver's seat, it will be run differently, and I believe, not for the better.
Android is constantly changing, partly because there are so many players, but also because Microsoft and Apple are applying pressure to most of the Android players through patent lawsuits and license agreements. I expect that Android will continue to hold significant market share because Google wants it to succeed and several of the OEMs have already had success with it.
With these two dynamics in play, the smartphone market is still changing.
42
BB is currently stuck on a legacy platform with, I suspect, vast cruft to support. They are transitioning to a new platform, based on QNX Neutrino, which is potentially a much better phone/tablet OS than either iOS or Android. In effect, they need what Apple got; a genius marketing director who was ruthless about ensuring that products met the needs of the marketing department, coupled with a platform that was good enough to support what he wanted to do. They have the platform. They need a Jobs.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
This is because any market with a complete monopoly means that customers will try to get out of that market altogether. Dell does not really want to be the only PC maker, because then anybody who really hates them will try and find an alternative to PCs, and that alternative may become the new norm. End customers actually need choice, because the perception of competition in the market generates buzz. The mere fact of competition brings the segment to the attention of people who would otherwise not hear of it. It increases the size of the market and enables companies to grow without having to do so at the expense of the competition.
Also, of course, there is no such thing as a "company" in terms of objective; there are people. Even the best CEO (who doesn't know he is going to die or retire before long) is aware that without competition he doesn't have a plan B if things go wrong, and his salary is likely to be lower than it would be if the shareholders think he might jump ship.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Not sure about phones, but for tablets by all appearances they're so "all in" that it's the opposite: they're going to hold back the PC to chase the tablet.
There's quite a few differences between the Apple of 1985, and the Apple of 2012.
#1 is that Steve Jobs spent a decade clearing out projects that were going nowhere, instead focusing the entire company on a handful of projects that all tied together in order to increase each one's value.
#2 is that Steve Jobs spent a decade clearing out the stiffs that were "managing" the place in the 90s, and installed people that had the same drive he did, and set the whole company up to focus on design and proper function, rather than shoveling out products for the sake of announcing products. There's no John Sculley running things today.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
To succeed in this area, they need marketing.
I find it interesting that a number of people responding to my post simply don't understand why marketing is so important. I ask one question: How did Apple survive when it was in the doldrums and the products were pretty crap? Users were made to believe that there was a plan, and made to feel that in some way they had bought into a company that was going places. That was marketing, pure and simple.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
There was a typesetters' error in the last sentence of today's RIM article. It should have read "Thorsten Heins will now lead RIM as it slogs toward inevitable bankruptcy and asset fire sale to the likes of Apple and Google." We apologize for the error.
0 1 - just my two bits
I don't really see any major problems with RIM. Their target market is businesses who need security and granular manageability. The company I work for happens to require those things. RIM is the best choice I'm aware of to meet those requirements. I will qualify that by saying I am a BES admin so maybe a little blinded by that, which is why I'd like fellow technical people to let me know what the real issues with RIM are and how the competition is superior.
As for devices themselves... I use a Bold 9900 currently and I like it. The touchscreen is great for navigating, though every now and again I have to tap something twice which seems due to slower processor taking a moment. This does not bother me. The built in browser now supports tabbed browsing, a plus but wasn't a big deal for me. The trackball is now a touch sensitive input, like the 9700. Before this phone I thought the 9700 was great with the upgrade from trackball to touch sensor. I disliked the smaller screen and size of the 9700 as I went to that from a 9000.
The Bolt 9900 meets business needs as I see them and as I use my phone. It provides secure email, whole device encryption, excellent remote management, and a functional level of referencing pdf/doc/xls/ppt... As functional as can be on a small screen. Android/iOS devices are marginally better at this due to the larger screen, gained from lack of a physical keyboard, but still not great. For referencing or especially editing those types of documents you're into tablet or notebook territory simply for the larger screen.
The only downside I see to the 9900 for the time I've had it, is battery life sucks. If I use it lightly I can get a day and change out of it. If I use it heavily I have to charge before the day is through. If you plan for it you will pretty much always have access to charge, but it's unacceptable to not make it at least a full day of moderate to heavy use. By that I mean phone calls, email, attachments, corporate IM, light web browsing, etc. Not playing games or watching multimedia all day. The 9900 has a much lower capacity battery than the 9000 did. I believe RIM did this to keep the device thin. Personally I don't care about having a thin device. Give the most MAh you can, to be sure it'll last at least two full days of use between charges, preferably longer. I don't care if it's as thick as an old "dumb phone". It stays on my belt out of the way, along with my personal phone ( a 5 year old dumb phone that can make calls and text), knife, flashlight and wahtever else I may be carrying. Smaller/lighter is nice but not at the detriment of battery life.
So please, /., if I am out of touch with how RIM is not meeting the needs of businesses please let me know. For personal devices, sure, Android and iOS have an edge. What are the real issues with RIM being inadequate for business use, particularly where central manageability and security are critical? To expand on that, if you believe iOS or Android are competitive there, what tools does one use to have easy centralized management and security comparable to BES if managing a few hundred mobile devices?
RIM had and still have a good size install base and it's firmly in the corporate environment. Given that and the history of how Microsoft uses it's profits to purchase market share this seems like another opportunity to pull a Nokia or better. The "better" being a direct purchase.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus