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 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
19. 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.
20. 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.
21. 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?
22. 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.
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 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
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)!

--
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 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
2. 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).
3. 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.
4. 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.
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 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
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.
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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