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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!"
Why am I reminded of the Iraqi Propaganda Minister?
Maybe it's better to have a credible CEO who says things are going poorly than an untrustworthy CEO?
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
"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?
If it's obvious to everyone that a company has problems, the worst possible thing a CEO can do is say everything is fine, because it makes everyone think he's out of touch or not interested in fixing what's wrong. A good CEO would acknowledge the problems and present a high-level plan for fixing them. Whistling past the graveyard just makes things worse.
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.
As we prepare to launch our new mobile platform, BlackBerry 10, in the first quarter of next year, we expect to empower people as never before...am the first to admit that RIM has missed on important trends in the smart-phone industry...RIM is undertaking a corporate overhaul that we expect will reduce annual operating expenses by more than $1-billion by the end of our fiscal year...
I read that to mean pretty much what you think a good CEO should say.
Some small differences:
Apple in 1997 actually had a viable roadmap, and succeeded. They also completely shook out the incompetent CEO once Jobs came back.
Microsoft in 2006 had a metric shitload of money still sitting in the bank, and a lock on the desktop.
It is possible for a business to come back from the brink, but RIM has shown absolutely no sign that they'll be a business that does so. All they really have coming up is BlackBerryOS 10, and even that's not much to trumpet, considering the far more fluid competition. RIM has given zero indication that they're working to break new ground, nor any hint of innovation in any area which could be considered as having future potential.
Long story short, RIM is circling the toilet swirl, and shows no promise of doing anything but getting sucked into the drain.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
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.
Lord of De Nile.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
I read that to mean pretty much what you think a good CEO should say.
^ this. No where did he say nothing was wrong, everything is fine. He said they are reducing expenses, launching a new platform, and new products, etc, etc, etc.
That's the opposite of saying nothing is wrong.
"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."
Great. Now I'm hearing that announcement in Professor Farnsworth's voice. Thanks.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
It is only our PHONES that SUCK.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Of course he's going to say that, he's the CEO and he's expected to say that.
A good CEO in this situation would say rah-rah things like "Our team has great people working hard on our brilliant strategy to return to market dominance" or somesuch. Yes, a CEO should be eyeing a pie the sky but the given quote is head in the sand.
Read your signature as part of the conversation, wasn't out of place.
...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
It is possible for a business to come back from the brink, but RIM has shown absolutely no sign that they'll be a business that does so. All they really have coming up is BlackBerryOS 10
You're obviously unaware of what RIM is doing except for what the doomsayers are trumpeting. RIM understands the work/life balance issue and the paradigm shift away from a work provided device to the BYOD model. Despite this companies still have to be able to keep their data secure. RIM has introduced two new technologies recently to address these issues. BlckBerry Mobile Fusion is RIM's replacement for the BES/BIS. Mobile Fusion allows an enterprise to manage thousands of devices running anything from BB OS to Android to iOS all from one web console. In case you were wondering RIM has indeed incorporated ActiveSync connectivity into their repertoire. The second thing RIM has introduced is called BlackBerry Balance which let's you keep your pictures of your family vacation and the slides of your upcoming presentation on the same device while being secured separately. With this technology you can walk into a new job with your own device and get it activated on their BES/BIS/Mobile Fusion server and it will create a secure work related partition on the device separate from your personal data. When you leave the company they simply wipe the work partition remotely leaving your personal data intact.
I'm sure you're probably saying that won't be enough to save them and you are right it won't which is why they are making the switch to BB OS 10. A lot of people are asking...even demanding that RIM just adopt Android and move on but as is evidenced in the market today none of the players in the Android space are making any money except for Samsung and they are making money on the handsets they sell as well as the chips they sell to their competitors.And despite the death knells being sounded by every industry "expert" developers are still lining up every day to develop for the PlayBook/ BB OS 10 because the few people using the PlayBook are actually paying to get the apps they want unlike the majority of Android users who want their apps to be free.Do they have a tough road ahead? Hell yes but considering they still sold more handsets in 1Q 2012 then they did in 1Q 2009 despite the RIM faithful all holding out for a BB 10 device I'd say they are far from toast. Most government agencies can't even consider another device because there aren't any that are FIPS 140-2 validated. There are a few here and there and there are third party solutions to make devices secure but they are far from optimal. We have a program where I work where they bolt on a security layer to iOS to meet the security standards and it is the biggest PITA I have ever experienced. Not to mention cumbersome and intrusive. Even people here who love their Apple device can't stand using it to access the network because of the hoops they have to jump through.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Not even a sonic screwdriver could fix this.
Unless you're working to get android on your hardware, you might as well pack it up and go home right now.
Yeah, being a "me too" player in a crowded market with a second-rate OS is a great plan. A shame that they're sticking with the most advanced mobile OS in the industry. That'll kill 'em to be sure...
Honestly, what on earth could possibly make you think moving to Android would be a good move for RIM?
Required reading for internet skeptics
Have you used one? There is no comparison.
After using a PB for any length of time, trying to use any Android or iOS device is like stepping back in time.
Apple uses know that "it's all about the experience". Well, RIM has that nailed as far as tablets are concerned, and all signs point to a revolutionary UI on the new BB10 handsets.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Did you read what he said?
As we prepare to launch our new mobile platform, BlackBerry 10, in the first quarter of next year, we expect to empower people as never before...am the first to admit that RIM has missed on important trends in the smart-phone industry...RIM is undertaking a corporate overhaul that we expect will reduce annual operating expenses by more than $1-billion by the end of our fiscal year...
I read that to mean pretty much what you think a good CEO should say.
Almost. Making the point about reducing operating expenses was a bad move. Its a red flag, as most of the easy cuts to operating expenses come in the form of killing off R+D. There just isn't that much low hanging fruit in manufacturing that they are going to save that kind of money any other way. Any analyst with even a modicum of common sense read that statement for exactly what it is. The cuts may or may not be the right thing for RIM to do, but they are the absolute worst thing to *say* that they're doing, as it will reinforce the perception that RIM is in a death spiral, which will hurt their ability to sell infrastructure grade product. Business' get jumpy buying from a vendor that might not be around in short order, and without business customers, RIM's death spiral will play out in a show worthy of Kodak. Making an admission like that will also help to convince RIMs remaining engineering staff that they need to get their CVs ready ahead of the end of the line.
-=Geoskd
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
So you're quoting a few trivial features, which marginalize their hardware, and make the claim that RIM is going to make their money in enterprise level software from here on out? The fact is that the entire line of BB hardware is on the way out, and without it, the rest of the company has no real market. As a software only provider, it is merely a matter of time before MS mops the floors with them, and as a hardware provider, they are barely an also-ran. Any way you slice it, they have no new product line, and their existing lines are demonstrably inferior in all but a few ways, with their competition passing them even in these few remaining ways soon. They are a niche player in a market that is destroying their niche. They would be better served making a speedy and reckless transition to manufacturing cooking utensils. Their impending doom is paralleled only by the spectacularly epic fail of Kodak (Whose executives to this day insist that digital photography is just a fad). Any company that uses the term "customer loyalty" in this day in age is out of touch. There simply is no such thing as brand loyalty anymore, and RIM keeps trying to trade on it. Worse still, they keep trying to make products that will appeal to corporate IT. This is a miserable bucket of fail because corporate IT doesn't get to make purchasing decisions, the end users get to make those decisions, and no IT exec is going to try to tell the VP of finance that he has to carry a BB instead of his favorite iPhone or Android. Any dumb ass in IT who tries to tell me I have to have a BB (whether the company pays for it or not), is going to find him/herself at the back of the unemployment line. I get to pick the hardware, they just have to support it.
Corporate needs are simple for phones. Just needs to get a decent cell signal on company property, needs to support my corporate e-mail. That's it. It does not need any other fancy software. It doesn't need any kind of access control. The idea that someone is going to glean valuable corporate secrets from our e-mail correspondence is bizarre at best, and patently absurd at worst. We don't email R+D materials. We don't use the devices to transmit anything of any espionage value, and as far as data retention requirements, the Fed can subpoena anything they want directly from our email archives anyway. Long story short, being paranoid about smartphones on the corporate network doesn't require anything as fancy as RIM makes it sound, and more and more executives realize that and tell their IT folks to deal with it. IT just needs to keep the smartphone data network and the corporate data network isolated from one another. Its not exactly hard to do, as any competent IT department will long ago have realized that having WiFi on your corporate intranet without isolation is just begging for trouble anyway. At the end of the day, RIM is innovating in a saturated and shrinking market space while their core business is being stripped out from under them by competitors with actual foresight. They are dying, and their new CEO is just more of the same.
-=Geoskd
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
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.
corporate IT doesn't get to make purchasing decisions, the end users get to make those decisions,
Actually corporate IT makes the purchasing decisions BASED on the criteria set forth by the business. In most mid to large size business that criteria is vetted through some type of security/legal department to mitigate problems before they can happen. If the business says we want iPhones then by the time IT gets involved the request is more like We must identify any and all possible attack vectors that might be exploited on the iOS platform and shore them up either through third party software or hardware. IT will consult vendors to identify the cheapest path since the business isn't willing to pay for the optimum solution to meet the requirements and then will bitch and moan about how cumbersome and glitchy it is. They will then spend an order of magnitude more money trying to fix the problem then they would have had they just purchased the right solution in the first place but it's OK because that money came out of the IT budget and not the capital budget.
Any dumb ass in IT who tries to tell me I have to have a BB (whether the company pays for it or not), is going to find him/herself at the back of the unemployment line.
If I am telling the VP of anything he has to have a BlackBerry (and I have) it is because the SVP/EVP told me that is what the VP had to have. You got a problem with that take it up with your boss. I simply deliver the solution I am told to.
Corporate needs are simple for phones. Just needs to get a decent cell signal on company property, needs to support my corporate e-mail. That's it. It does not need any other fancy software. It doesn't need any kind of access control.
I'm confused. Your saying you don't own a smart phone since all you need is to make/receive calls and get email but yet are lambasting RIM for not having a state of the art smart phone available for you who does not need one? RIM makes phones especially for you. Cheap, reliable, and sturdy. You don't have to have a BES for your email to work. For companies a little more paranoid than you though the BES is a nice option.
The idea that someone is going to glean valuable corporate secrets from our e-mail correspondence is bizarre at best, and patently absurd at worst. We don't email R+D materials. We don't use the devices to transmit anything of any espionage value,
It's clear from this statement you do not, in fact, know anything about what is valuable to businesses. That's not surprising as most employees, even executives, don't either. contacts list, potential deals, embarrassing ANYTHING can be used by your rivals and I've seen it happen on more than one occasion.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
You're obviously unaware of what RIM is doing except for what the doomsayers are trumpeting. RIM understands the work/life balance issue and the paradigm shift away from a work provided device to the BYOD [wikipedia.org] model.
Honest question here... do you work for them? I ask because honestly, that's not what I was shooting for when I wrote what I did. When I'm saying is that RIM has nothing coming that will make the world at large sit up and take notice. Nothing. A BES bolt-on and a pseudo-VM/app thingy isn't going to make the public cream their pants and line up for hours to buy it, like they would a new iPhone. It isn't going to make gadget-heads stumble over each other trying to get their hands on one, like a high-end Android phone. It won't appeal to the budget crowd, because Android took that crowd too. BB is scrapping with Microsoft for the ass-end of the market right now, and if RIM intends to survive, that needs to change... drastically.
The only reason RIM is accommodating the BYOD model at all is because their competition pioneered the BYOD model! Seriously - RIM is not even aiming for where the puck is now... it's following the damned thing. The Mobile Fusion "innovation" is just BB's way of accommodating existing demands - the tech is pretty and all, but it's not pushing any boundaries, and it's damned sure not taking the market at large into any sort of new direction. If anything, it's a desperate attempt to remain relevant.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
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
. You actually did a decent write-up on BES before, but your posts about BB10 and PB do read like mindless fanboi drivel, unfortunately.
Yeah, I quit caring. Facts don't mean shit to anyone here. I'd rather not get in to a flame war over tedious, unimportant, issues with irrational idiots on slashdot.
I could compare their suite of gestures, for example, to iOS and Android but I'd just be wasting my time.
Now, with you specifically, I don't think I'll get anywhere. I don''t believe there is anything that I can write that could possibly sway you from your current position. I encourage you to take a second look at the PlayBook's UI and compare it to iOS and Android, though I'm sure that your only goal then would be to find something that the platform doesn't do as well as one of the others (though you'll have a hard time finding such a thing) and ignore things that it does so much better than the others. (This is, oddly enough, why I'd be wasting my time here. It doesn't matter if everything was better except feature X -- feature X is all the hater would care about. Stupid waste of my time.)
I figure fan-boy ranting is just as effective as a well-thought-out response here. Heh, and just as reasonable as the irrational, thoughtless, repeated memes RIM-is-dead / everything-they-make-sucks.
Required reading for internet skeptics