Slashdot Mirror
RIM CEO Says Company 'Seriously' Considered Switch To Android
zacharye writes "RIM CEO Thorsten Heins's interview with the Telegraph on Thursday made headlines for his admission that the company can't keep up with Apple and Samsung without outside help. But there's another interesting nugget buried within the interview that didn't get quite as much attention: Heins says that RIM took a long, hard look at migrating to Android before deciding to plow forward with BlackBerry 10. Heins said, 'We took the conscious decision not to go Android. If you look at other suppliers’ ability to differentiate, there’s very little wiggle room. We looked at it seriously — but if you understand what the promise of BlackBerry is to its user base: it’s all about getting stuff done. Games, media, we have to be good at it, but we have to support those guys who are ahead of the game. Very little time to consume and enjoy content — if you stay true to that purpose you have to build on that basis. And if we want to serve that segment we can’t do it on a me-too approach.'"
You failed as CEO. Google gives you all apps for multimedia, so you don't have to do anything there. But they give you 0 enterprise apps, so that is what you could have done. Its not like corporations are going to pirate your apps and risk being sued.
Blackberry could have survived as the business market's option. The security they once offered was unmatched.
But now we even see RIM migrating away from what little they are good at by giving away their keys to oppressive governments in order to continue doing business in that country. RIM is feeding itself by cutting off its own appendages.
I don't think Android is going to catch on in the business world. We just had a new vendor selection at my employer and IOS was chosen because the comfort level with security and malware on the Android platform is lower. (The nuances in that discussion don't matter, the fact is that the market sees IOS as safer than Android. Perception is reality)
It's unfortunate that RIM decided to commit corporate suicide because the market has lost something that was once good. Consumers now have fewer choices, and that's bad.