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RIM Firing (Nearly) Everybody
itwbennett writes "Research in Motion (RIM) reported grim Q4 results Thursday and announced sweeping personnel changes. Leading the parade of departing execs is Jim Balsillie, former co-CEO of the company, who has given up his board seat. David Yach, who has been CTO of software for the company for 13 years, is retiring. And Jim Rowan, chief operating officer of global operations, who has been with the company for four years, is leaving to pursue other interests."
RIM's failure is attributable, in no small part, to flat-out engineering laziness. For example, I recall their networking APIs made developers responsible for figuring out which transport mechanism (e.g., cellular, wi-fi) was available when they wanted a HTTP connection. That's nonsense. The developer just wants a connection. Irritants like these were systemic, and these make developing quality software nearly impossible. Granted, users don't see that part, but they do experience it indirectly as programmers are forced to reinvent solutions to simple tasks that ought to be high level abstractions.
Too true. This is a prime example of what happens when you fail to innovate in the face of a changing competitive landscape. Blackberry used to be the last word in mobile email, and while they remained very good at email, every other manufacturer caught up, and did far far more, while Blackberries, model after subtly different model, didn't expand their feature set at all. They introduced startling revelations of technology like replacing the trackball (which I didn't mind) with a laptop-style trackpad, which I couldn't stand, and they upped the resolution of their OS a bit. Everyone else offered bajillion megapixel cameras with a solid metric fucktonne of apps, and a proper, i.e. NOT WAP web browsing experience. But hey, Blackberry owners could still get their email, right? By about January last year, I'd say the only people buying Blackberries were people who already had Blackberries and had never tried anything else.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
I remember when slashdot used to cover tech stories before news outlets and definitely before I saw it on the evening news. Now slashdot is covering stuff after it's aired on the evening news, sometimes with a delay of days, and covering it badly with sensationalist titles I'd expect from Fox! It's been dying slowly, discussions becoming more Us and Them and science fanboi yelling with little thought out argument or logic. The tide has turned and in the future this year will probably be seen as when the demise of Slashdot occured. :(
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
either you innovate or you are out of business really soon
Or you innovate really well and run headlong into a ridiculous patent infringement lawsuit that soaks you for 2-3 years worth of your R&D budget, and then you have no choice but to stop innovating... The NTP shake-down of RIM pretty much directly marked the beginning of the end for them. It's a cautionary tale, really.
No, that's very naive. Its not because people want shiny that RIM is in the dumpster. Its because "business phones" really needed to be able to do everything that the "non business phones" do too. Their web browser sucked, and they didn't do a good job making a phone ( storm sucked) with a decent screen to view more complex documents and emails. A proper business phone is a consumer phone PLUS additional security features. Not a consumer phone MINUS some usability features.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
When is the last time you saw an actual photocopier and not a multipurpose copier/printer/scanner/etc.? That's roughly the same problem with Blackberry phones.
I would say this is an example of "Lead, follow, or you'll be pushed out of the way."
The real story here, the story that most people on Slashdot don't like, is how Apple reinvented the smartphone market. Blackberry was king of a world where smartphones were for self-important middle-managers. Smartphones were annoying, the didn't work very well, and they weren't useful for very much anyway. Yes, you could browse the web, but only on this little mobile-only browser that didn't display web pages the same way as your computer. Yes, you could respond to email, but email. Yes, you could theoretically install a 3rd party app, but there selection of 3rd party apps that weren't complete junk were awfully limited.
And then Apple came along with the iPhone, and the mobile industry shuddered. You had a phone that rarely crashed, was easy to use, and did many of the things that only full computers used to do. Email could be setup to use normal mail protocols. Web pages looked like web pages. You could sync your music and listen to it as easily as you could on a high-end dedicate music player.
Apple was leading the way, and most of the cell phone industry was smart enough to follow. You got Android phones in response, and Microsoft developed a better version of their mobile OS. RIM... did nothing. And now, as a result of their inaction, they're being pushed aside.