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RIM CEO: 'There's Nothing Wrong With the Company'
redletterdave writes "Research In Motion is in trouble. The BlackBerry maker has been suffering from an identity crisis for the last six months, which has resulted in mass layoffs, lots of job shuffling, dramatic drop-offs in market share and a quickly decaying portfolio for investors. But not according to Thorsten Heins! The newly-appointed CEO published an op-ed in the Toronto Globe and Mail on Tuesday, and also appeared on a radio program the same morning, to deliver one message: 'There's nothing wrong with the company as it exists right now.'"
"I'm not dead yet... I'm happpeeeeeeee!"
Please, someone call the doctor..
CEO: "But this ship can't sink!"
CFO: "She's made of iron, sir! I assure you, she can... and she will. It is a mathematical certainty."
CEO (to shareholders and public): " Everything will be juuuuuust fine, folks! "
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Why am I reminded of the Iraqi Propaganda Minister?
Of course he's going to say that, what else can he say? We'll know by this time next year if they can pull it out of the fire.
There's nothing wrong with a company going bankrupt.
Yes, RIM only posted a couple billion in profit. Time to get the headstone ready. Oh wait, people only hear about the bad stuff.
In all seriousness, did everyone forget Apple circa 1997? Or Microsoft circa 2006? It's actually possible for businesses to come back.
It probably sounded like this...
They're as good at positioning and marketing in the mobile information technology market as Microsoft is in the on-line advertising market.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Of course he's going to say that, he's the CEO and he's expected to say that.
Coming out and saying "we're screwed" may be technically more accurate - but it'll only hasten the demise of the company even more. Who knows? Maybe BB10 is amazing - but if he says anything other than "we're doing just fine" then he's running the risk of his careless talk meaning that it'll never ever see the light of day.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
"I'm Thorsten Heins! Try our new Blackberry. I liked the phone so much - I bought the company!"
#DeleteChrome
Sure, there's nothing wrong with RIM. You could argue that. Just as you could argue with any company that's seen their market disappear from under them due to inaction. If things simply hadn't changed, they'd still be rolling along nicely.
But that's the problem: Things change.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
Nothing wrong at all with the company or device, its all those darn customers that would rather have an iPhone or Android!
"There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!"
I'm not sure why we're seeing all of this. But if you RTFA, you'll see a totally different message. Heins gets that they are in a lot of trouble. He's simply saying that they aren't going anywhere. They are executing their strategy in the midst of a transition. All of the negativity is expected. But they haven't lost their head, they know where they're going. The headline should read: "RIM CEO Acknowledges past, hopeful for future" Nice to see a CEO be candid about their problems.
Well I think we just found one thing wrong with the company: The CEO is delusional, a liar, or both.
It's lonely at nation's only BlackBerry retail store
I don't ahve the link handy, sorry, but a few days ago the news reported that they halted RIM's stock trading because it was in a massive freefall. Investors don't believe the missed the ball as the world transitioned to smartphones, dominated by Android and iOS. Nokia and RIM are both suffering severely financially because of this. RIM is laying off 30% of its workforce and haemorrhaging money.
There might not be room for more than 2 big players in the smartphone space and those slots are already taken by iOS (80% of smartphone profits) and Android (20% of profits). Everyone else is fighting over the table scraps.
It is obviosuly PEBKAC
They missed the small wave he made with his fingers when he said it. Move along.
Democracy: Crowdsourcing a country near you
I feel for RIM... I really do... this whole iphone thing has f'ed them. And the android isn't helping... and a resurgent interest in smartphones by microsoft is just more bad news.
The competition for the smartphone has increased exponentially and RIM might well not have a place in the future of it.
I don't see how they compete with the cool factor of the iphone or the adaptability of the android.
They still have a pretty solid lock on having the most secure phones but how long is that going to last? And more importantly, will the IT departments that care be able to enforce a RIM only standard over the cries of "But I want an iphone!!!"
The whole situation is pretty desperate and I don't know how RIM gets out of it.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
RIM is betting it all on BB10. But BB10 will not save RIM. Why not? Because the *only* people looking forward to BB10 are RIM investors.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
Very simple - adapt it and make it tune to commerce/corporate - so obvious ...
obligatory waynes world 'and monkeys might fly out of my butt' quote
Slightly off-topic, but to avoid making Toronto even more of the center of the Canadian universe than it already is...
The Globe & Mail is only a Toronto newspaper insofar as it's published in Toronto and is utterly obsessed with the Toronto Maple Leafs. It would be much more appropriate to label it a national newspaper, as it's read and distributed throughout Canada, and attempts (not always successfully) to provide a balanced perspective from all regions.
"There's nothing wrong with the company as it exists right now."
BUUUUUUUT, there will be something wrong with the company when all those delayed write-offs hit the books in 6 months to a year, then you are all fucked. Haha!
http://www.welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com/images/07-minister.jpg
At least he didn't announce, "Good news! The company is now safe. Microsoft has decided to invest $1bn in RIM"...
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
And there'll be nothing wrong with the company as it won't exist in the near future.
The first sign that something is wrong with the company is when the CEO feels obligated to say, "There's nothing wrong with the company as it exists right now."
It may not be the thing that he's trying to reassure us about (it probably is,) but RIM sure looks and acts like a duck that isn't going to be saved. Now Mr. Heins is just quacking like one.
The title's phrase in quotes is a fiction -- it does not appear in the article.
As far as I can tell, the RIM CEO never said "There's nothing wrong with the company."
Lord of De Nile.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
"The lack of traffic in the forlorn BlackBerry store, which opened in 2007, also reflects how the smartphone brand has lost its allure with consumers and is in huge trouble in the U.S. market."
We aren't making any money, but we don't need no stinkin' money!
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Company Gives Away RIM Jobs, CEO Claims its Making Lots of Money
There's nothing wrong with the company as it exists right now.
Perhaps, but there soon will be a big fucking problem.
Don't worry, he is in the first stage right now.
Their CEO isn't very well plugged into reality. Somehow they went from being THE phone for business customers to going out of business in just a few short years. Bravo!
I'll bet he has a college degree.
Sure we hit an iceberg and it is listing and taking on water, but as you see we aren't drowning yet. In fact I'm going to go get myself a gimlet and chill it iceberg shavings and listen to the band.
The brilliant thing about apps, from a manufacturer's perspective, is they lock the consumer into using a particular platform. Apple users are reluctant to abandon their app libraries, as are Android users. Folks who have already left RIM for the others over the past couple of years won't be be coming back without something really extraordinary coming from RIM. Which does not appear likely. At best they can hope to mitigate the exodus in order to buy enough time to win some market share back. Personally, I think it's hopeless.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
It is only our PHONES that SUCK.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I wonder if this, at some later time if the stock plummets, could be seen as a false material statement, an attempt to defraud the stockholders. The stock seems to be 10% of the value at the beginning of 2011. Another drop like this puts in the dollar stock.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
...our products on the other hand are getting a little long in the tooth...
He is giving another RIM job
...that the bankruptcy courts can't fix.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I remember I had this discussion with a friend when RIM announced that the Playbook relied heavily on Flash. It was the wrong strategy because the logic of the strategy was "Let's do the exact opposite of Apple. If Apple was not going to support Flash, we will support it everywhere in our OS." They could have moved and maintain old Blackberry OS down the line to feature phones and develop BBOS10 as the "smarter" phone platform with technologies they could control.
And then he leapt onto his mighty unipeg and flew off into the night shouting "second star to the right and straight on till morning!".
So, the excrement's hitting the fan and you just took over as CEO after the last d-bag CEO bailed out on his golden parachute. What do you do?
A) Say your company is in really bad shape in gory detail.
Guess what happens?
-Your investors and creditors bail out, giving you zero financial room to maneuver. It's the business equivalent of running out of gas in the middle of the freeway.
-Your engineering staff bail out or get headhunted by your rivals, gutting your ability to make new products. The people who stay are the least capable ones.
-Your competitors start circling overhead looking at whether a takeover would look good, which you now have to deal with
-Your shareholders call up their lawyers and you have to spend time staving off shareholder lawsuits. Remember, whatever details you just gave about how bad the situation is, is admissible in court.
-The press writes you off for dead, meaning that no one will touch your products or technology. Your revenue dries up.
In short, game over.
B) Say your problems are minor and you've got a plan to fix them that's proceeding smoothly
Less of the above still happens but you get a lot of benefit of the doubt depending on how persuasive you are.
In short, panic kills. This is just as much true for a corporate crisis as it is a fire in a building or evacuating a sinking aircraft. An organized group of people can still solve a problem, even if they're individually nervous; a panicked mob can't.
And all the /. crowd can manage to say is "HURR DURR DENIAL LOL!!!1!1!!". You people are such a sad lot.
...although I doubt they'll ever rise back to pre-iPhone prominence.
Allow me to preface this by noting that I'm not a fan of RIM's current devices or software. I don't own a Blackberry, or any other cell phone for that matter (I truly have no desire to talk to on the phone. I have a 3G iPad and an iPod touch for messaging and Internet access). I find their phones uninspired, and their existing OS lineup and development environment to be highly fragmented, with older OS based devices often available at the same time as newer OS based devices, and little upgradability to newer OS's on older devices -- not exactly the most developer-friendly sort of environment.
I'm also not a fan of how they cow-tow to carriers, particularly here in North America. Specifically here in Canada (RIM's home country), newer phones and devices are often available elsewhere first, and Canadians frequently have to wait months for newer models to be made available, after they've already launched elsewhere.
All that being said, RIM still has over $2 billion sitting in the bank, and they still have a lot of talented people, and own some impressive technologies. I was particularly heartened when I had heard they bought QNX Software Solutions. QNX is quite the powerhouse of an OS that most PC users aren't familiar with, but which has made quite the name for itself in the embedded space as an efficient and extremely stable microkernel based RTOS (Real Time OS) which has powered PC's, vehicles telematics systems, and carrier grade routers, along with a variety of industrial embedded systems. In short, it's an excellent OS for driving smart phones and tablets.
So RIM has the money, they have the technology, and they have the talent -- and now they have an excellent POSIX compliant OS to base their devices off. I think they're in the right space -- assuming they can execute successfully. They really need to get their software game up, make the OS front and centre, provide best-of-breed development tools and systems, and wean themselves off the idea that the carriers are their device customers. Where Apple really succeeded with the iPhones was in their being able to tell carriers how things were going to work, and in many regions selling their devices directly to customers completely unlocked (which was a real breath of fresh air here in Canada), cutting the carriers out of the loop when it came to device features and functionality. RIM needs to play hardball with the carriers, and if the carriers don't want to play by their ground rules, they too needs to sell unlocked devices directly to consumers, so that their biggest fans don't have to wait for nearly a year (or more) to get the latest and greatest devices. And if they're not going to take older devices out of the sales channels as soon as they're replaced, they at least need to ensure those devices can be upgraded to the latest OS (i.e.: they shouldn't be permitting the retail sale of new devices that can't run the latest and greatest OS. A mishmash of BB OS options available simultaneously on new devices isn't good for a software ecosystem).
If they can do those things, they have all the things they need to persevere and even return to some form of prominence. Their devices could be great and even desirable once more, and even the Playbook could find a useful niche. But they have to get their software strategy on track, based on a standard OS core across devices and device families, make it friendly and easy to develop for, and start putting the end-user first, and the carriers second. Then they'll be able to produce devices more people will actually want.
As such, I don't feel the death spiral is inevitable. The pieces are all there for them to get back on track, and as a Canadian I hope they get their development plans in order, get the right people working on the right projects, and execute a smart plan to make devices people want to own.
Yaz
RIM had it once.
Then Apple opened up truly mobile computing and RIM didn't respond.
End of story.
...the Titanic was unsinkable.
"Rumors of icebergs of any shape or form coming into contact with this vessel are complete fabrication. Return to your cabins."
Can't unsee it.
BB phones are actually pretty good for corporate types. They're tough, simple, have great keyboards, battery life, and so on. For corporate tough the basic phones do exactly what they need and do it well. Corporate types have a few critical needs: they need security and they need to respond to long emails with long emails. They don't need GPS, Angry Birds, or much else. I am not saying that BBs are better than the competition overall but they are extremely fit for the purpose they are put to with a single glaring exception. They are often crippled as someone who just stepped on a land mine.
First the Telcos often throw a few little twists of their own limiting things such as browsing over Wi Fi. Then the corporate IT people have and usually abuse the ability to set various permissions such as no installed Apps, no browsing certain web sites, and other anger inducing features. Phones such as the iPhone don't have these anger inducing features and leave lots of room for people to love them.
RIM could pull its ass out of the fire tomorrow morning by releasing an update that eliminated all blocks that have been imposed by telcos and IT departments. These people would scream and moan and make long lists as to how RIM had ruined their lives but seeing that RIM accountants must be looking up Novell as a case study it is time for bold moves that would suddenly turn that resented little brick into something they would fall in love with again.
My only memories of Novell are how much of a drag it was on my system and how the IT people would dominate my laptop until I just bought my own. Oh wait isn't that just like all the people given free BBs who go out and buy their own iPhones.
There are BB people and there are iPhone like people. BB can keep those people if they could give them a reason; QNX is not a reason. Freedom is a reason.
There is something wrong with the company. They produce phones with minimal storage, especially for applications, and outdated interfaces. The browser is especially terrible.
In Soviet Russia meme tires of you!
Great! We'll see if they can catch up... I mean, "execute," in the manner that makes sense to you. In the mean time they aren't picking up market share any time soon, and I see more business people recommending the iPhone to each other, and businesses that have let it into their IT stable because it works in both the business and personal space (don't forget business people have lives outside of work) and gosh darn people like them!
In the mean time...
RIM needs to play hardball with the carriers, and if the carriers don't want to play by their ground rules, they too needs to sell unlocked devices directly to consumers, so that their biggest fans don't have to wait for nearly a year (or more) to get the latest and greatest devices.
Right! Where would any of these devices be without the carriers? And just because it worked for Apple, because there was pent up demand for something new, doesn't mean RIM can be successful with a similar attempt, after Apple and Android have sucked up so many customers. When's the last time you remember a newly popularized innovation being overtake in the market, for a second time? Android and Apple have developers, customers, apps for multiple markets and lots of multi-year contracts... RIM has a phone.
Really? Is that why people are complaining about the lack of RIM jobs available?
I basically see a lot of this happening right now.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Met him once while I accidentally walked into a gay-rights-conference. he gave me a card with 'RIM CEO'... I told him, man, you can't do that... You just can't do that... Brrrr.
RIM has yet to present any vision where it has a plausible future as anything but, at best, a marginal maker of nice "feature phones", and even that's unlikely, given their cost structure. Yes, they have cash on hand now, but what good is it doing them? What can they invest it in, beyond the new software, to rescue the company from the death spiral? RIM is in the same boat as Nokia right now, only without the MS-funded lifeline; they are a company with an expensive cost structure selling a shitload of phones into very cost-sensitive markets. One that the Koreans are becoming better and better at, for a lot less money.
They are stupendously late to the smartphone party, and they just announced it'll be another six months. It doesn't matter if the new software is so great, it ushers in the second coming of Steve Jobs; it's horribly late, and cannot possibly bring anything compelling enough to the party that they'll attract the developers needed to make it a viable platform.
Apple rose from certain doom because it outright created, from whole cloth, the MP3 player market. Existing MP3 players at that point were clunky and awkward geek toys that rightfully sold poorly; the iPod brought something truly different to the party, with a nice computer-based back end for an elegant front-end. Nothing we have seen about the new BB software has shown it to be paradigm-changing in any way. It's just another mobile operating system, in a market that already has three perfectly usable players. They simply haven't announced a single compelling feature that cannot be quickly duplicated on another platform. Their traditional strength, the enterprise market, has already shifted to the other players, which have more than caught up in that space.
Right! Where would any of these devices be without the carriers? And just because it worked for Apple, because there was pent up demand for something new, doesn't mean RIM can be successful with a similar attempt, after Apple and Android have sucked up so many customers.
I think that RIM has to do it precisely because Apple did it. Apple changed the game by putting end-user interests first. The failings of RIM and others were in putting the carriers first, and high-end customers who go after smart phones now expect to be able to buy unlocked, new models on the day they are released, with little or no carrier-specific restrictions.
You have to go with end-user expectations. Go against those expectations, and people are going to go with the device that meets them. It is simply yet to be seen if RIM has sufficiently read the writing on the wall to see that they need to meet end-user needs first, and not carrier needs first. I posit simply that if they do see this, then they have a chance for redemption. If they stick with the "please-the-carrier-first" idea they've followed thus far, they're going to have a much harder go of it -- the time is passing where customers are willing to wait an extra year for the latest and greatest device because carrier XYZ hasn't certified it yet, and when they do you get it it's with the carrier logo silkscreened on the front, carrier locks applied, and their useless apps pre-installed.
Yaz
If nothing is wrong, then why are they lying and say that they will fire 5.000 people while the actual number of layoffs is 8.000? This is seriously messed up company.
The private sector is doing fine.
New Economic Perspectives
RIM has been sleeping for many years because they had a good positioning in the market, but their phones and smartphones are obsolete, slow the only chance they have to survive is to provide the BES services for other devices, they should sell Blackberry apps for iPhone and Android this way enterprise users could continue to use their services avoiding to bring with themselves two mobile devices. RIM and CEO please listen to my advice don't waste your time, free the protocol and start opening otherwise you'll be out of the market within 1.5 years as Nokia will do.
Denial comes before anger and acceptance, right?
Or, in this case perhaps, denial comes before the golden parachute.
Unlocked, carrier independent smartphones were common in many places around the world before Apple, pioneered by companies like Nokia. Given how long Apple's phones were carrier locked, all Apple really did was to replace one evil overpriced corporate master (AT&T) with another one (Apple). For the US, that may seem like an advantage, in the rest of the world it was a step back.
where Leslie Nielsen's nose starts growing after he says there's nothing to worry about :)
Unlocked, carrier independent smartphones were common in many places around the world before Apple, pioneered by companies like Nokia. Given how long Apple's phones were carrier locked, all Apple really did was to replace one evil overpriced corporate master (AT&T) with another one (Apple). For the US, that may seem like an advantage, in the rest of the world it was a step back.
I never made any claim that Apple was the first to do this -- but they certainly popularized the concept in the minds of consumers, at least here in North America. And if you read back in the thread, you'll note I mentioned which country I live in (hint -- it's not the US).
Having spent quite a good bit of time in Europe and Asia these last few years, I'm well aware that in many countries, SIM unlocked phones are common. However, in regions where they aren't (like pretty much all of North America, no thanks in part to the history of parallel, incompatible CDMA and GSM networks) most hardware manufacturers were more than happy to go with "business as usual" and simply sell to the carriers, and not directly to consumers. They were all more than happy to allow the carriers to lock the phones however they wanted, limiting (and in some cases even removing) features available in the rest of the world. Apple refused to play this way, and changed the game. Here in Canada (I've saved you from having to go back and look it up), Apple released the iPhone 3G without an exclusive carrier like in the US, and by the time the 3GS rolled around, Apple was selling them directly to customers completely SIM unlocked, so you could use them on any carrier (this was at a time when AT&T still had an exclusive contract for the iPhones in the US, resulting in many Americans buying their iPhones in Canada so they could get unlocked versions).
In context of this discussion this is important, because North America (and Canada in particular) is RIM's own backyard. RIM needs to be able to "win" (for some definition of "win") in their home territory if they want to be taken seriously. Which means they're going to have to appeal to the needs of its end-users, and not the needs and whims of the carriers if they want to succeed. The model in their backyard has changed thanks to Apple -- the genie is out of the bottle, and they won't be able to stuff it back in and succeed simultaneously.
Yaz
Why do Americans like to step on companies that have great technology, that have secure communication, and were leaders. True their handheld device is older and the new one is slow to reach production market stage, but RIM has never cheated anyone, never patent trolled, has not gone to court to bar competitors, or done all the tricks to prevent competitors from coming to the marketplace.
Their service is reliable, if not more than most.
You have a valid complaint if the handheld device is not of recent design. Other than that, what have you to say?
One analogy I have is that your father should be shot because he does not know how to use an Iphone or a tablet. Your father does not have the right to hold a job because of the mentioned deficiencies.
Keep away from negative people, they are not your friends. The USA was not built by negative thinking people.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Yes, you did. You said "Apple changed the game by putting end-user interests first". Apple did neither. The only thing Apple put first is their bottom line, by selling phones that weren't just carrier locked but also much more expensive than other vendors and locked into Apple's app store. Palm and Nokia sold plenty of smart phones that were unlocked and unrestricted in the US, long before Apple, and Apple's policies were a step backwards.
As for RIM, they are toast. Anybody who wants control over their smart phone can get an unlocked multiband Android phone. Or they can just buy a cheap prepaid Android phone and not worry about carrier lock-in. For the price of a single iPhone 4S, you can get four Android phones, one on each major US phone network, if you like, making the issue of lock-in moot.
If you want to make money, buy long term put options, then wait. Profit.
Yes, you did. You said "Apple changed the game by putting end-user interests first".
Reading comprehension 101: Apple may have changed the game, but that doesn't imply that they were the first to do so. Simply that they were big and important enough in the industry to be able to force a useful concept where others had either a) not tried, or b) failed to gain sufficient traction or mindshare. Again, I didn't claim they were first -- you incorrectly inferred that. I suggest you look up the concept of "First Follower".
Yaz
First rule of politics: never believe anything until it is officially denied.
Yeah, "Reading Comprehension 101", take it to heart. You say that Apple caused a change from a customer-hostile to a customer-friendly market. I'm saying that no such change took place at all. Before Apple, some phones were unlocked and unbranded, while others were locked and tied into some company's expensive "ecosystem", and after iPhone... it's the same. And if you really want a cost-effective, unlocked, unrestricted smartphone, a $800 iPhone 4S is the wrong phone to get.
Who was the industry leader in the cellphone market in 1998? Where are they today?
RIM is just one of many to fall.
If nothings wrong why the F*** was I laid off, nothing was wrong my any of my employee evaluations?