RIM Firing (Nearly) Everybody

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RIM Firing (Nearly) Everybody

Posted by samzenpus on Friday March 30, 2012 @12:06AM from the end-of-the-line dept.

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."

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like palm by scafuz · 2012-03-30 00:08 · Score: 5, Interesting

either you innovate or you are out of business really soon
1. Re:like palm by NoobixCube · 2012-03-30 00:27 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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
2. Re:like palm by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-30 00:38 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Ok, it was primarily a business phone, but it didnt support good software APIs for gaming. Consequence? People would have to buy a second phone just for entertainment. They had a quite complete Java Stack, but wouldnt bother to implement not even JSR184 or OpenGL ES. And they had friggin' GPU phones!
3. Re:like palm by dcherryholmes · 2012-03-30 00:42 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Palm innovated its ass off with webOS. It failed anyway, but not because of that.
4. Re:like palm by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2012-03-30 00:51 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Arguably, RIM's real problem(aside from glacial movement) was that their core specialty, mobile email, was something that could be done 'well enough' by the less elegant means of simply shoving technologies and protocols designed for full computers into smaller devices.(very strong similarity to Palm, here)
  
  Back in the day, when pagers were still pretty hip and running from AAA batteries wasn't yet somewhat deviant for a mobile device, RIM's ability to shove email onto handsets was pretty serious business. Trouble is, as team silicon advanced, the "Um, just run an IMAP or Activesync client, like a real computer, y'know?" solution became viable. Harder on the battery and the data plan; but trivially interoperable with everything already set up for real computers to get email.
  
  Windows Mobile should have been RIM's wake-up call: UX was pretty dismal; but it was a more or less architecturally successful implementation of 'well, just build the computer smaller!' school of mobile design. Once Apple came along and dealt with the UX problem... Game over man, game over.
  
  Palm went down a somewhat similar road: under the assumption that mobile devices would be highly power constrained and very infrequently connected, their 'conduit/sync' system was crazy elegant, and they managed to shove some pretty impressive capability into gizmos with weedy little ColdFire CPUs and absurdly small slices of RAM. Again, though, team silicon marched on, and it became possible to just shove a computer into a smaller box. Microsoft's attempt was a usability disaster, which gave Palm some extra time to live; but their attempts to scale classic PalmOS up to take advantage of more powerful hardware and more frequent connectivity never really came to much.
5. Re:like palm by jeffmeden · 2012-03-30 00:52 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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.
6. Re:like palm by datavirtue · 2012-03-30 00:56 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Several years ago I looked into becoming a Blackberry developer. I noticed their site was terribly unprofessional and it reminded me of a mom-and-pop shop at times. Just from visiting their site and wading through the developers section I decided to forgo wasting my time on their platform since it was obvious their management had serious problems. I think the principles made out like bandits many years ago and really just stopped caring all that much. They milked it for what they could, and now you see the end. RIM has been dead for years.
  
  --
  I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
7. Re:like palm by glop · 2012-03-30 01:01 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Well, that was after a long stagnation. And the disruption was so major that there was little connection between the old business and the new. A customer with a Treo or Palm V probably had the same shock switching to an iPhone or a Palm Pre.
  Also, webOS came after the iPhone. That makes it less innovative, since most of the differences between an old Pam were pioneered by the iPhone:
  - get rid of pen, use fingers
  - capacitive multi touch makes keyboard less needed, so get rid of it.
  - get modern OS and not 16/32 bit kludgy memory address space
  - get real browser
  - PDA swallows the phone and not the reverse
  Personally, for me the Treo was the time when Palm failed to innovate. Notably, they rejected the low end. I remember seeing 100$ phones, 100$ Palms. But there was no 150$ Palm-phone, only a very expensive Treo.
  So, in the end, I'd say Palm is really a company that failed to innovate in time. And note this is really a case of innovating and not inventing. If you look at my bullet list, nothing was really groundbreaking in 2000. So it's not that they were unlucky and the guys in the labs didn't have the "Eureka moment". It's that they didn't look at what was possible and put it together quickly enough.
  That's really quite sad, Palm was a company that had understood some really important things about simplicity and focus on the core features.
8. Re:like palm by sunderland56 · 2012-03-30 01:21 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  People would have to buy a second phone just for entertainment.
  The Blackberry was a business tool, just like a photocopier. Nobody complains about having to buy a game console because their photocopier can't play games.
  The Blackberry was an effective business tool because it only had business-related functionality - so any company buying them didn't feel they were providing free toys for their employees, they were only providing a necessary tool. Unfortunately now everyone wants the latest/shiniest/coolest gadget, not just a business phone.
9. Re:like palm by tgd · 2012-03-30 01:27 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  either you innovate or you are out of business really soon
  Yeah, the only thing worse than a Rim job is a Palm job these days.
10. Re:like palm by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · 2012-03-30 01:34 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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.
11. Re:like palm by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2012-03-30 01:36 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Did you miss my use of phrases like "well enough" and "less elegant means"?
  
  My whole point is that RIM developed a (to the best of my knowledge) uniquely parsimonious and full featured mechanism for delivering email to power and computationally constrained clients. The battery life and minimal specs of blackberry handsets attests to this.
  
  The problem for them(as it was for Palm) is that it has become possible to just throw power at the problem(in the sense that you can afford the SoC and squeeze just about one waking day out of the battery), which leads to devices that are capable of things that only full mobile computers are capable of and capable of largely adequately emulating the features of more parsimonious devices.
  
  For whatever reason, it has proven to be quite difficult to take the historically platform-constrained system and augment it to take advantage of more powerful hardware(both Palm and RIM tacked on some features to their existing OSes, with limited success; but ended up grabbing an entirely new operating system and attempting to move to that. We now know that Palm did a good job; but not fast enough to save themselves. Jury is still out on RIM); but it is comparatively trivial(although deeply inelegant and wasteful) for a less platform constrained system to brute-force most of the features of a more carefully designed system.
12. Re:like palm by Xiaran · 2012-03-30 01:41 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  And lets be honest. Business and Sales weenies want to be able to play Angry Birds when in boring meetings.
13. Re:like palm by Programmer_In_Traini · 2012-03-30 01:48 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  well, i agree with your postting, but i dont think you're right on what RIM's main problem is/was.
  RIM suffered from executive indecision. they just couldn't agree on what the playbook should be like, what features it should sport. Aim to sweep the young adults market or focus on pleasing its already existing business clientele. Ultimately they went for middle ground and they failed because 1. Their first version arrived almost at the same time as the ipad SECOND generation arrived, almost withing the same month. and 2. they failed because the device isn't competitive enough for the ipad, so forget mass consumer market and the device failed to meet the business clientele market and they failed there too.
  Mostly, i would wager that RIM would have made it out alive if they had entered the race within the same month or two as the first ipad. people wouldn't have had expectations of what a proper tablet should be and mass consumer market could have been swayed either way. i think ipad still would have come out ahead, but perhaps RIM wouldn't have bitten the dust so hard.
  There is still hope for RIM and their playbook if they decide to remain in the tablet business. It remains the only tablet certified with the FIPS-140-2 (encryption) standard, and therefore makes it the best tablet for business models. But they got to screw their heads tight and stop trying to get both markets. Their new playbook 2.0 os has potential, the support for android as well. modifying their Blackberry enterprises software (bes) to support android, blackberry and itunes is a move that very well could save them.
  RIM's not done yet, but clearly their boat is heading toward the niagara falls (they're canadians, get it?? :p) so they need to make their next decisions right.
  
  --
  If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel. - Will Kommen
14. Re:like palm by swalve · 2012-03-30 01:50 · Score: 3
  
  That's weird, because I went to that site one time and found it refreshingly clear and complete. "Here is what you need to do X Y and Z." And I downloaded the application to make custom interfaces, and it worked as advertised. Now, I'm not too experienced with that kind of stuff, but it's the first time I've ever had something like that work.
15. Re:like palm by Andy+Dodd · 2012-03-30 01:51 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Wrong. Google C2DM is extremely efficient, and can be used for multiple purposes in addition to providing the genuine push email you claim that only BlackBerry has.
  Now, Android with an Exchange server... that's a different story.
  
  --
  retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
16. Re:like palm by nine-times · 2012-03-30 01:57 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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.
17. Re:like palm by errandum · 2012-03-30 02:00 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  I see your point, but I don't agree with you (at all)
  Those protocols were design for computing power lower than a calculators'. They would have run on pretty much anything. What RIM did was construct a whole network to provide secure communications to the users of their phones, while having a great UI for it (at the time), and that was revolutionary. It was never that you couldn't get e-mail on phones, just they went the extra mile. They were what other players aspired to be...
  On the other hand, now they are not doing it. Pretty much everything RIM has done in the past few years has been trying to catch up, and when they do, their competitors are already miles ahead.
  The only way RIM will ever reach the pack is if they skip trying to develop everything from scratch and just add their ideas to Android (Nokia is living proof that windows mobile 7 will not sell, even if you do great handsets). With it they can take advantage of everything Android already does and differentiate themselves by doing some of the things better (much like they did in the past).
18. Re:like palm by jellomizer · 2012-03-30 02:27 · Score: 2
  
  You don't have to live with your photocopier.
  
  If work gives you a phone, the company will often allow leeway for you to use it as your primary cell phone even for personal use. It is a perk if you are going to be on call for 24 hours a day, you might as well not have to pay for cell service. You can use your work phone for some personal use too.
  
  So the ability to play games, browse a better web, and do non-business things too really made alternatives more attractive.
  
  For the longest time, the Blackberry while a business phone had better toys and then toy phones.
  
  --
  If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
19. Re:like palm by careysub · 2012-03-30 02:38 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  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.....
  Amen. That Blackberry is automatically competing against everyone's personal cellphone. A job I had several years ago they provided their tech staff with Blackberries, but I refused to use/carry it. Why? I already had a cell phone, which I still needed to carry since the rest of the world uses it to call me, and it was smaller (the Blackberry had a permanent keyboard making too big to fit in the pocket), and did more. So I changed my contact info to my personal cell phone.
  When a product is sufficiently uncompelling that you don't want to use it even when they give it to you free, that product has a long term problem.
  
  --
  Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
20. Re:like palm by MightyYar · 2012-03-30 02:51 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Unfortunately now everyone wants the latest/shiniest/coolest gadget, not just a business phone.
  It was a decent phone, I suppose. And it was fantastic for text emails.
  But other phones came along that simply outclassed it and absorbed it's capability into their feature sets.
  It's like what happened to the alphanumeric pager companies once SMS came along.
  
  --
  W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
21. Re:like palm by iONiUM · 2012-03-30 03:02 · Score: 2
  
  The site is awful, one of the worst I've ever used. So I don't know what you're talking about.
22. Re:like palm by Proaxiom · 2012-03-30 03:28 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  So the ability to play games, browse a better web, and do non-business things too really made alternatives more attractive.
  Several years ago I first heard the argument that BlackBerry was getting its brand poisoned a bit because IT administrators were disabling most of the features that shipped on the phones (for security reasons, or whatever). So a large percentage of users didn't even know you could load third party apps or browse the web on it (though the web browser sucked until BB 6 shipped in 2010), and so the phones seemed much less compelling to get for personal use. Of course that's not the whole story of BlackBerry's decline, but it's an interesting point nonetheless.
23. Re:like palm by Proaxiom · 2012-03-30 03:46 · Score: 2
  
  This is pretty far off base. RIM was working hard to try to create a consumer smartphone market starting from around 2004. Their first attempt at a 'candy bar' form factor smartphone was crap (7100 series), but the Pearl (8100 series) released in mid-2006 was quite solid for the day and a good design for trying to wean people off of traditional 'feature' phones, which were cheaper but much less capable. The consumer market didn't really take off until the first iPhone was released in June 2007, and RIM's consumer offerings did crazy well at that point (mostly the Pearl and the Curve, which were much cheaper than the iPhone and were perfectly fine if you didn't care about the web browser or the touch screen). By 2010 more than 80% of RIM's sales were to end consumers rather than businesses.
  RIM's real problem was that they were building on top of a proprietary operating system, originally designed to run nothing other than a JVM. This made it really hard to build it into a compelling platform for apps and games which have become vital for the smartphone category in the last 2-3 years. This is why they did a complete overhaul by deciding to switch to QNX, but apparently much too late and with poor execution.
24. Re:like palm by tripleevenfall · 2012-03-30 03:53 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Dumbphones compete against land-line telephones and VOIP home phones largely for the business of the elderly.
  Among the rest of us, smartphones compete with smartphones. When the original iPhone came out, Blackberry never responded (and still has not, 5 years later) and that's why they are suffering.
  It's like they're trying to sell us laptops without wifi. Well, it's a business tool, so it'll always be used in our narrow use case, right?
25. Re:like palm by tripleevenfall · 2012-03-30 03:55 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  I think 80% of Blackberries keep themselves out of the trash can because some corporate policies haven't yet caught up to BOYD.
26. Re:like palm by Stellian · 2012-03-30 04:02 · Score: 2
  
  Or you innovate really well and run headlong into a ridiculous patent infringement lawsuit
  Amen to that. The patent minefield makes it impossible for a small company to compete. The ability to innovate has nothing to do with it, bringing an innovative product to market involves also using allot of other simple and obvious ideas that some other large company had the opportunity to patent since they've done it first. At that point your options are to either:
  - patent your ideas, hide them really well, and expect some other large company inadvertently use it, then become a patent troll
  - spend billions of dollars on patents licenses or a patent war chest like Google/Motorola
  Big companies love the patent game, it's the best system to maintain an oligopoly. They can milk their patents even from beyond the grave, like I'm sure RIM will too.
27. Re:like palm by nine-times · 2012-03-30 04:14 · Score: 2
  
  I'm not saying that the iPhone was perfect, but it certainly made a drastic change in the smartphone market. Unless you simply weren't aware of smartphones in 2006, it's impossible to look a the phones that existed before and the phones that were developed afterwards and not admit that cell phone manufacturers completely changed their strategy specifically to compete with the iPhone.
  In 2005, the hot new phone was the Motorola Q. Do you remember what that looked like? If not, go Google the Motorola Q and the Palm Treo. What do they look like?
  In 2006, the iPhone was released. Picture the original iPhone. Think about how it looked, and how you interacted with it. Remember that when it was introduced, it was mocked for having a virtual keyboard and a toy-like interface, which people (nerds) claimed would be unusable.
  Now look at major phones today. Look at the Droid Incredible 2 and the Galaxy Nexus and whatever other major phone you want to look at. Do these phones look more like the Motorola Q, or more like the iPhone? Do they operate more like the Motorola Q, or more like the iPhone?
  Maybe you hate Apple so much that you're just living in denial, but without a doubt, the smartphone market today is largely aiming to replicate the iPhone.
28. Re:like palm by narcc · 2012-03-30 05:14 · Score: 2
  
  That's like saying "if you didn't care about the wheels and the engine" when talking about a car.
  LOL, that's ridiculous! The web-browser is not what defines a smartphone, neither is the touch-screen! That's perfectly absurd.
  Really, capacitive touch-screens like the iPhone uses are absolutely wretched for doing anything beyond scrolling through a webpage or tapping really big targets. The best you can say about tying on one is "you get used to it" Horrible.
  Of course, RIM offers touch-only devices and one of the best mobile browsers on the market. In short, they've caught up already. Their next line of phones looks to put them ahead.
  
  --
  Required reading for internet skeptics
29. Re:like palm by Rich0 · 2012-03-30 05:31 · Score: 2
  
  Yup. They should talk to the PHBs - the guys they sold their last generation of products to. Forget being the best platform to watch movies or listen to music. Figure out how to make it trivial to do collaboration on documents, read email without spending 30 mins booting up your laptop and connecting to the VPN, and so on. Stick a VGA out onto it that works with any video projector built since 1995, and so on.
  Give it a slick client that connects to SharePoint and makes document checkin/out, editing, collaboration, etc dead simple. Make sure it supports any WiFi encryption technology or VPN technology deployed anywhere. Design it so that the guys deploying them can plug a USB dongle into it and turn it on and all the corporate policies and setup is done in less than a minute unattended. Heck, offer to preconfigure them if the company mails the dongle to the factory. Deploy a tool that does all the legal records retention stuff to a semi-broken unit and provisions a new unit with the latest backups. Pay all the big CRM/ERP/etc vendors to build a native client for the thing, and offer management solutions for remote sales forces. Provide dashboards and present a vision of huge IT savings, and all that other stuff that consumer-oriented companies don't bother with.
  RIM isn't going to capture the teenage market. MS Exchange doesn't cover that well either. And yet, I don't see the latter going away anytime soon. You just have to understand your niche and be the best at it.
30. Re:like palm by jbolden · 2012-03-30 05:49 · Score: 2
  
  Because of the way data plans are sold. No one is making much money selling tablets with data. That's something that RIM got right from the start. The problem of course is the carriers want to sell two plans and RIM isn't in a position to dictate to carriers anymore.
31. Re:like palm by jbolden · 2012-03-30 05:56 · Score: 2
  
  That's not true. RIM wasn't doing nothing. RIM was doing all sorts of truly innovative stuff for the large enterprise market that Android and Apple are nowhere near close to having. But RIM did not develop the client connections nor the large consulting group required to get these server products actually implemented. So RIM had really cool technology that didn't get implemented.
  If businesses were using the full RIM solution RIM phones would have fully integrated universal communication suites while Apple and Android have cool browsers and games and terrible UC clients. Businesses wouldn't be moving towards using consumer phones.
32. Re:like palm by nine-times · 2012-03-30 08:23 · Score: 2
  
  I'm not begging the question. You claimed that RIM had developed innovative features for large enterprises that Android and iOS can't match. I'm challenging you to name them.
  Because in my experience, I've talked to many people who claim that Blackberry/BES is a technically superior platform, but when you ask them why, most of them can't give examples or explanations. The few times that I have gotten an answer, it's something like, "Well I know that you can change this obscure security setting I've never changed and I don't know anyone who has changed, but in theory you can change it."
  I've worked for enterprise-level companies and supported BES servers. I know a thing or two, and yes, there are features that aren't available with ActiveSync. I'm just not sure I'd call them "innovative" as much as "gimmicky features that almost no one uses and often don't work very well."
33. Re:like palm by Grishnakh · 2012-03-30 08:46 · Score: 2
  
  It's not unfortunate at all. Why would you want to carry around two phones all the time? That's utterly stupid. Do you think that people who use a phone for work email shouldn't be able to play games at all?
  You don't need the photocopier to play games, because you don't play games in the office (hopefully). Instead, you go home and play games there on your own time. Or, if you have a home office, you can play games on your PC, which plays games just fine (which is why your analogy sucks).
  But people don't carry one phone around only during business hours, and then promptly leave it on their desk at 5PM and pick up their personal phone; the whole point of having the business phone is to be able to access work email when you're away from the office and on your own time (as professionals are expected to be available, to a limited extent, during non-work hours and days). So if you're going to carry around a phone for work email, it might as well do all the other things you expect a phone to do these days, including run lots of apps and play games, since every decent smartphone these days does those things. The alternative is asking professional employees to carry around two large smartphones, which is utterly stupid and inane.
  By not bothering to be an all-in-one device, Blackberry is no longer relevant.
34. Re:like palm by Grishnakh · 2012-03-30 08:48 · Score: 2
  
  Screw that, every employee with a phone should be able to play Angry Birds during their lunch hour, or after work or on weekends. A good phone will do that, plus work well for their business uses. Only a shitty phone maker would ask their customers to buy and carry around a second phone to do such things.
35. Re:like palm by nine-times · 2012-03-30 09:22 · Score: 2
  
  Yes, I'd concede that to be a nice feature with the potential to be genuinely useful. Still, with all the companies that I've supported Blackberries for, exactly none of them used that feature.
  I've worked for quite a few companies, big and small. Three of those companies had more than 300 employees. One of them had a few thousand. All three had internal BES servers (though I've supported BES servers outside of those 3). Do you know what features those 3 companies used? Push email, push contacts, push calendar, remote wipe. I think that's it.
  So yes, it would be a definite exaggeration to say that the extra features of BES aren't useful to anyone. I would give you at least that. However, it still seems to me that, in recent years, RIM has developed very little that generally benefits the users of their products. For most of their customers (both individual users and businesses), things have seemed stagnant, and newer Blackberries don't seem to be much of an improvement over old ones.
  Admittedly, this perception may not be shared by everyone.
Titanic is sinking by na1led · 2012-03-30 00:13 · Score: 4, Insightful

and the first ones to bail are the Captain and ship mates.

--
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
1. Re:Titanic is sinking by lxs · 2012-03-30 00:20 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  I didn't know Francesco Schettino was in charge at RIM.
2. Re:Titanic is sinking by DrgnDancer · 2012-03-30 00:57 · Score: 2
  
  I wouldn't be very surprised to find out this wasn't voluntary. Being asked politely to resign so you don't have to be fired is pretty common in these types of jobs. Let's you save face and minimizes bad press for the company. The number and timing of these "resignations" makes me think they're polite firings by the board. CEOs still answer to someone, even they can be asked to leave.
  
  --
  I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
3. Re:Titanic is sinking by Dog-Cow · 2012-03-30 01:01 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  They are working for a Tech company. If they don't keep up with the news, they are idiots who deserve to wake-up to a bankrupt company.
4. Re:Titanic is sinking by swalve · 2012-03-30 01:52 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  CEO pay is a tiny fraction of operating costs. Cutting one's pay to zero would mean a failing company could run in the black for another couple of hours.
5. Re:Titanic is sinking by ArsenneLupin · 2012-03-30 01:53 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  You are confusing with the Costa Concordia. Edward Smith, the captain on the Titanic went down with his ship.
6. Re:Titanic is sinking by phantomfive · 2012-03-30 04:23 · Score: 2
  
  The employees definitely knew what was going on. A lot of them were quitting on their own, too. Which is how you know that a company is sunk. The best employees tend to leave first, and even if they get new management who wants to turn the company around, they don't have anyone who can build good products. See also, Yahoo.
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Misleading title by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-30 00:15 · Score: 5, Informative

The title of this story is misleading.
There is nothing about firing in the source article.
1. Re:Misleading title by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-30 00:19 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Also it is just the executive level is leaving. The headline seems to imply the whole company is shutting down, which is not the case.
2. Re:Misleading title by XiaoMing · 2012-03-30 00:25 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  From the few lines at the end of TFA, something like "Rats abandoning ship after having chewing through own hull" sounds more appropriate.
3. Re:Misleading title by mcgrew · 2012-03-30 00:50 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Well, if you're in the board room your attitude is that the workers don't matter any more than the machinery. To the 1%, only the 1% matter.
  
  --
  Free Martian Whores!
Crackberry Perspective by alphax45 · 2012-03-30 00:17 · Score: 4, Interesting

http://crackberry.com/rim%E2%80%99s-q4-weak-results-and-outlook-and-brutally-honest-ceo-commentary

Looks like Thorsten is actually being the CEO now. Might get worse before it get's better. I have faith (mostly because not much else is left)!

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K Man
Incidentally by Xacid · 2012-03-30 00:17 · Score: 5, Interesting

I got issued a Blackberry Bold for work yesterday and so far I've been incredibly impressed and actually like it more than my Android phone. It's something I never thought I'd get into but the physical format and the UI made pretty good sense to me (unlike android which feels disorganized/non-intuitive in a few places).
Where I think RIM has really failed is in regards to creating a culture around their devices outside of the workplace. Android has geeks and counterculture, Apple has the hipsters...and well everyone else. When I think of people with Blackberries I think of corporate culture and suit and ties - what young consumer wants to be a part of that?
Anywho - for my own selfish reasons I hope they continue (at least from my first impression) making quality devices and figure out how to market themselves outside of the enterprise.
1. Re:Incidentally by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-30 00:23 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  Thank you. It's good to see someone else who actually likes their Blackberry. I've had one for years, and am getting tired hearing from everyone else how much better the Androids are and iterating reasons despite the fact that they've never owned one. I've tried Androids on multiple occasions. I returned them. They're fun for a few days, but when it comes to being productive, I prefer my Blackberry.
2. Re:Incidentally by NoobixCube · 2012-03-30 00:31 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Different strokes for different folks, I guess. With a Blackberry, I often find myself scratching my head, but with an Android phone, even in the early versions, disarrayed and beta-ish as they were, and the current versions, laden as they are with manufacturer crapware like TouchWiz, I've never been left wondering "now where do I find that feature?"
  
  --
  Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
3. Re:Incidentally by imagined.by · 2012-03-30 00:40 · Score: 2
  
  Just a hint: If you thought BlackBerry was stupid before you actually tried it, maybe you shouldn't call Apple users hipsters before doing the same. Just sayin'. Most geeks I know use Apple, because they can afford it. Most hipsters I've seen at university use Android, because its cheaper and "different".
4. Re:Incidentally by RubberMallet · 2012-03-30 00:41 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I've got both a Blackberry Curve 9360 (my work phone) and an HTC Android... and I detest using my Blackberry. The UI is terrible... really terrible. The call quality (on the exact same provider as my Android) is atrocious to say the least - which is a much bigger issue than an annoying UI. Trying to read an email, type an email, send an email is an exercise in annoyance and frustration, swiping that stupid track spot and invariably having to back-track all the time.. Trying to dial a phone number... or worse, remember which button it is to hang up the call instead of leaving the call open which I always seem to do first.... every single call.
  Basically my Blackberry sits on my desk in standby because I have to have it there... but if I want to do anything "real" I use my Android which works very very very well.
  I'm not the only one that feels this way either. Amongst the staff where I work, exactly zero like the Blackberry phones (we all have slightly different models of either Bold or Curve and 2 people have the Touch).
5. Re:Incidentally by usuallylost · 2012-03-30 01:22 · Score: 2
  
  We still use Blackberry devices almost exclusively at work. We have done pilot projects on both Android phones and the iPhone and neither one has all of the features we need in order to integrate the phones into our corporate environment. As long as that remains the case I think they are going to have a lock on a certain portion of the corporate and government markets. The real question is whether that is a large enough and profitable enough market to keep them in business. If any of the other smart phone makers starts offering phones with all the features that companies need RIM is in big trouble. As far as creating a culture, outside the corporation, for themselves that is going to be an uphill battle. At this point if you see somebody with a blackberry the first thing you think is "company phone".
6. Re:Incidentally by SexyHamster · 2012-03-30 02:04 · Score: 3, Informative
  What exactly, in the realm of productivity, is easier on a Blackberry? I'd be interested in hearing some examples :)
  Good points:
  battery life, on/off schedule helps. This also prevents people from waking me at 3am
  Good default email app
  Good default calendar app
  BMM is excellent
  Easy to manage, deploy security policy for large number of devices
  Works well as a voice phone. Good call quality.
  Bad points:
  For a small group of workers BES is more of a hassle than a gain
  Most of the entertainment apps are terrible. I've given up on finding one that isn't awful. This does not hinder work productivity, however.
  The UI is fairly weird. I'm not a fan of the multiple desktops that display redundant copies of many of the same icons.
  WIFI connections can be picky. Refuses to work with some WAPs
  In summary:
  Over all I do find it more productive than either the HTC Dream or iphone 3G I've worked with. I'm not a fan of small platform gaming so I'm not upset about not having a large set of games for the device.
  Would I recommend it to home users? No, not really. Would I recommend it to office users? Meh.
7. Re:Incidentally by nine-times · 2012-03-30 02:10 · Score: 2
  
  Apple has the people who don't flash a second thought at dropping $1000 on something trivial
  ?
  You do know that you can get a iPhone 3GS for $1, right?
8. Re:Incidentally by drinkypoo · 2012-03-30 02:12 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  You do know that you can get a iPhone 3GS for $1, right?
  You mean, you can get an iPhone 3GS and a contract for $1 plus the contract fees, right?
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Engineering quality. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-30 00:18 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.
Sinking ship by prisoner-of-enigma · 2012-03-30 00:18 · Score: 2

I've heard of rats deserting a sinking ship but this is the first time I've heard of them being *cast overboard* as well!
I had a co-worker who left a great position at a good company to go work for RIM about a year ago. Everybody told him he was nuts. I get the feeling he's regretting that decision right about now.

--
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Boggles mind to think about how they squandered by Sgs-Cruz · 2012-03-30 00:18 · Score: 5, Interesting

Having only recently gotten into the smartphone game (July 2011), I didn't really know anything about the industry back when RIM/Blackberry was king.
But now, having read some about it... wow, what a waste. They basically had huge, fat, margins, essentially no competition in the smartphone arena, for almost five years - and freaking sat on it and did almost nothing. Meanwhile Apple and Google were in the lab inventing the future. Unbelievable.
Like most Canadians the story concerns me because what does it say about the country? I sometimes wonder - even if RIM had had a clue and tried to come up with something iPhone- or Android-like, could they have done it without the California engineer and developer community? They had the money, but could they have enticed the brilliant graduates of top American schools to move to Ontario? And I don't mean to say that Canadian engineers aren't good, but that Apple and Google have access to a global talent pool - did/does RIM? (Fascinating question: How much does snow and ice have to do with the fortunes of a mobile phone developer?)
It's a sad but interesting story all around. I hope they can turn things around but I don't see much chance of it at this point.

--
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
1. Re:Boggles mind to think about how they squandered by alen · 2012-03-30 00:27 · Score: 2
  
  RIM was only ever good for the enterprise market to give employees email on the go. first it was the execs and then the worker bees so they couldn't give the excuse that they couldn't work on the weekend because they didn't see the email.
  the original iphone was overpriced but it looked cool. original androids were crappola. RIM had years to release a new product but they stuck to their BES/BIS investment. can't blame them. after spending billions of $$$ on a cloud computing solution before cloud was everywhere how do you go to the board of directors and tell them to dump it all and start from scratch?
2. Re:Boggles mind to think about how they squandered by na1led · 2012-03-30 00:46 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  RIM's failure is due to their focus on getting support contracts with businesses. They're biggest selling product was BES which was plagued with bugs and issues. Our company used to have a BES server, and almost every week we had issues with it. RIM's support was also a joke, and sometimes they couldn't even fix a problem that was related to their product. Put it simple, the rest of world moved on to new upgrades, and RIM stayed stagnant.
  
  --
  -- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
3. Re:Boggles mind to think about how they squandered by jeffmeden · 2012-03-30 01:03 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Having only recently gotten into the smartphone game (July 2011), I didn't really know anything about the industry back when RIM/Blackberry was king.
  But now, having read some about it... wow, what a waste. They basically had huge, fat, margins, essentially no competition in the smartphone arena, for almost five years - and freaking sat on it and did almost nothing. Meanwhile Apple and Google were in the lab inventing the future. Unbelievable.
  Like most Canadians the story concerns me because what does it say about the country?
  Go back and read about the NTP settlement. RIM was brutalized in a way that's hard to compare. And those fat margins? Every penny went to paying the patent troll under the bridge so they could take their phones to market.
4. Re:Boggles mind to think about how they squandered by nine-times · 2012-03-30 01:48 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  It's a common problem. You've seen companies fail due to this sort of thing, (e.g. Palm) and you've plenty of other companies go through years of sitting on their hands and failing to improve their products (including Apple, Microsoft, Motorola). It's a problem of upper management being short-sighted and risk-averse.
  The management probably didn't want to spend too much money on R&D, because that cuts into their profits. Why not keep squeezing the cash-cow they have? You saw this debate recently within Google, where people on Slashdot were arguing about whether Google should be funding all these experimental products, or whether that was a waste of shareholders' money. People don't like spending money, and any exertion of time and effort and money will threaten to alter the status quo. People don't like altering the status quo, especially not when the status quo is working for them.
  But then they're also short-sighted. They don't think about how the world changes and technology changes. They don't have a long-term plan for remaining dominant, because they haven't yet taken note of the challengers. They think, "We're so important, we'll never be displaced."
  This is often how the powerful fall.
5. Re:Boggles mind to think about how they squandered by Sgs-Cruz · 2012-03-30 02:22 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Haha, I guess that's true. Maybe what it most says is that Canadians are insecure because we wring our hands over a single big company falling from greatness :) But on the other hand, didn't Nortel go much the same way?
  I guess it's a problem for smaller countries where their is only one world-class player in a given market. China or the U.S. doesn't agonize over a single big enterprise stagnating because there are several more waiting in the wings.
  There must be consternation in Finland over Nokia akin to the parochial concern for RIM in Canada? Or are the Finns more confident.
  
  --
  Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
ITSS by Alomex · 2012-03-30 00:21 · Score: 4, Insightful

ITSS: It's the software stupid.
Blackberry got to where it was on the strength of its hardware. Problem is the iPhone changed the game and now the software is as important as the hardware.
The blackberry web browser was inferior until rather recently. Developing apps for a BB was a mess compared to the iPhone, the playbook couldn't even read emails until the latest update.
RIM can easily survive: Apple was in worse shape for far longer than RIM and still made a come back. However they need their own Steve Jobs who can refocus the company and develop a product that is a unique proposition, just like Apple developed, in rapid sequence the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad.
Kudos and good job to the executive team by alen · 2012-03-30 00:29 · Score: 2

you're finally getting a well deserved vacation for all the hard work you put in the last 15 years
And then there were two. by kurt555gs · 2012-03-30 00:37 · Score: 2

Maemo is toast, Symbian poofed. Not RIM is going. Wall St and cell carriers did this.
It's like the ocean now only has two species of coral. Android and iOS make up the entire eco-system.
What fun is that?

--
* Carthago Delenda Est *
slashdot behind the times by Jmc23 · 2012-03-30 00:40 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.
1. Re:slashdot behind the times by Sponge+Bath · 2012-03-30 01:36 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Nothing wrong with people first hearing news elsewhere then coming here to discuss it after stewing on the implications. That makes for more interesting posts.
Re:They better hope BB10 is the greatest OS ever. by realityimpaired · 2012-03-30 00:46 · Score: 3, Insightful

One of the features on paper is the ability to run Android apps natively....
Unless they've scrapped that feature, in which case they're boned.
Re:I love my Blackberry by DrgnDancer · 2012-03-30 00:50 · Score: 2

iPhone has had push e-mail notification since the first major software update. Unless you bought one within a few months of release and never updated it, you should have had that. I don't actually have a Blackberry, but my wife's tells her when she has e-mail. As to the virtual keyboard issue, I can see that. I've never had a problem (I swear my wife can type faster on the virtual keyboard on her iPhone than a real keyboard (yes, my wife has both, work provides the Blackberry)), but I recall seeing a article a few years ago about sumo wrestlers in Japan needing custom cell phones because even the hardware keyboards are too small for their fingers.
Also: Woot, nested parentheses in a post. Can I get an achievement for that?

--
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Re:Pass out the golden parachutes by JasterBobaMereel · 2012-03-30 00:53 · Score: 2, Insightful

Brand : Worthless
Customers : Leaving in droves, and no reason to stay now
Patents : the only asset they have left to strip ...

--
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
They panicked. by concealment · 2012-03-30 01:25 · Score: 3, Interesting

This reminds me of Yahoo: they're listening too much to the pundits, looking too much at trends, and not doing what is known to succeed, which is figuring out what you do right that people like to buy and getting better at it.
I am sorry to see this happen to RIM, but their competition did just up the ante with Android. I still like a lot of the Blackberry features better and often feel their hardware and software is better engineered, but a generation or so behind. Sometimes that's the price you pay for stability but sometimes it's a liability.
Re:business tool, just like a photocopier by DocSavage64109 · 2012-03-30 01:51 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.
Oh, how I love corporate-speak by sootman · 2012-03-30 02:29 · Score: 3, Funny

"Jim Rowan, chief operating officer of global operations... is leaving to pursue other interests."
Interests include candle-lit dinners, long walks on the beach, and working for a company that isn't circling the drain.

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Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
GroupWise+BB by ulzeraj · 2012-03-30 04:59 · Score: 2

My boss uses a Blackberry. We're a Novell shop and use eDirectory and Groupwise... and there is some kind of integration with the BB. On the other side, the iPhone clients for Groupwise are very expensive and don't offer basic features like push notifications.