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Yahoo Excludes BlackBerry From Employee Smartphone List
Nerval's Lobster writes "Freshly minted Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is promising the company's U.S. employees a new smartphone of their choice. There's just one catch: it can't be a BlackBerry. According to Business Insider, which posted significant portions of Mayer's memo, employees will have a choice of the Samsung Galaxy S3, HTC One X, HTC EVO 4G LTE, Nokia Lumia 920, or the upcoming iPhone 5. 'We'd like our employees to have devices similar to our users, so we can think and work as the majority of our users do,' she wrote, adding that Yahoo will shift away from BlackBerry as its corporate device of choice. Somewhere up in Waterloo, at least one Research In Motion executive could be screaming in frustration over this development. Not because Yahoo is a bellwether for corporate smartphone use; its U.S. employees shifting to an iOS, Windows Phone or Android device won't automatically drive other major companies will follow suit. But as a symbol of RIM's current issues, it's difficult to find a better one than a high-profile technology company dumping its collective BlackBerry stock in favor of pretty much any other platform."
I'm glad to see they chose Nokia Lumia 920 as a phone. It is very powerful, sleek and well-done smartphone with enterprise features from Microsoft. It's really much better business phone than iPhone or Android-based smart phones. On top of that Yahoo can use Visual Studio to develop their own apps - all with the maturity and familiarity of C# and Windows programming. Great choice!
What's next, RIM employees stop using Yahoo for search and tell their employees to use Google or Bing?
Oww, that has to hurt.
Yeah, we all knew that RIM was on the outs; but getting cut from the running for 'stodgy corporate issued device' by the somewhat-less-than-vibrant players over at yahoo? Ice burn, man, Ice Burn.
No one buys Microsoft phones.
They're in the same boat as RIM but they get a pass for some reason.
I can only assume Microsoft is paying them to stay somehow? Maybe free phones?
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
This sounds like a ploy to retain employees by tempting them with shiny objects.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
If RIM wasn't worried before (though I don't know how that'd be possible), they definitely should be now. If other companies follow Yahoo's footsteps, this may start a new trend, which would be the end of RIM (as in, it'd expedite the process of what's inevitable).
CEO Marissa Mayer: "so we can think and work as the majority of our users do".
That makes sense on the surface, but it doesn't exactly sound like the attitude of a company that wants to be an innovator or technology leader. It might not be the attitude of a market leader, either. At the risk of sounding like a fanboy of another big tech firm, "Think Same" may not be the motto to live by. But then I'm CEO of nothing.
I am not a crackpot.
once they are done with eliminating bb, could really spend some time on getting their smtp servers removed from spamcop.
Vajk
Your ELD is off.
choice of the Samsung Galaxy S3, HTC One X, HTC EVO 4G LTE, Nokia Lumia 920, or the upcoming iPhone 5
None of these phones have real keyboards. To those of us with large fingers, that's a deal-breaker when selecting a phone; on-screen keyboards are simply unusable with a screen that small. As much as it sucks in other ways, the BlackBerry at least did offer a hardware keyboard. Yahoo should offer at least one Android phone with an actual keyboard (maybe the Samsung Epic 4G?)
Companies that both manufacture hardware and hand-roll their operating systems tend to collapse over time.
There are too many decisions which must be made centrally, and these involve too many conflicting "business objectives." In other words, the two branches (hardware and OS) can't figure out how to work together to nudge consumers toward spending more money, time and effort on the product.
Apple ducked this one by purchasing the core of its operating system from two sources, and allowing maintenance to be mostly driven by updates at least one of those OSes (BSD).
Blackberry has been frozen in motion (like Yahoo), unable to develop new software or hardware at the pace of the market. The result is that the world has moved on and, by parallax motion, RIM has moved backward.
I can see why, I would say the same thing I believe. Blackberry is dying, there is no use going out and spending a dime on a Blackberry... Even when BB10 comes out, it will be too little too late. Really RIM will just be clawing at Microsoft's market share, those few people who don't want an Android or an iPhone will have Windows Phone and BB 10 to choose from. If RIM can stay together long enough to get it finished that is... Otherwise Microsoft will have all 4 of those non apple-android market shares to themselves...
What's next, RIM employees stop using Yahoo for search and tell their employees to use Google or Bing?
I think the vast majority of them are already using monster.com and dice.com, etc. Oh wait, do you mean general internet searching, not looking for a new job after the downsizing?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
We run a small business and I can say that our IT group was quite happy when we moved away from blackberry devices. Not because of the phones themselves but instead because of the server side software. It is very likely things have changed since we stopped using their phones but I can tell you that we would be constantly losing device sync between the server side and the phones and would have to manually resync the connections. If that software is still in use I can see how companies the size of Yahoo would want to not have to support the additional infrastructure that is needed for the blackberry devices.
It's like being dumped by the dorkiest fat kid in school.
As much as I hate to say it, I don't think that moving people from BlackBerry to Windows Phone will solve the problem she's describing.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Or are they talking about the old ones still lying about?
Damn, technology moves just too quickly for me to keep up with it.
This has to result in fewer RIM jobs for everyone.
Fortunately there isn't the slightest possibility that I would ever be recruited by Yahoo or, in the event that a stray high energy cosmic ray shower happened to hit their HR server in exactly the right way, that I would accept the resulting job offer. But this piece really does suggest that they don't have a sense of direction. A new shiny smartphone most of whose features you won't be allowed to use at work and which you won't use at home because you don't want them tracking you? The ability to annoy you 24/7 with irrelevant requests from managers?
RIM may nor may not be dying. It may or may not be doing a pre-second-Jobs-incarnation Apple. I certainly wouldn't buy a BB 7 phone now because we all know it has as much future as a flea in a liquidiser. But being left of the Yahoo list - it's a list that many people might want to be left off.
As another minor issue, I can't help feeling that some of RIM's bad press is because many user experiences are based on the locked down corporate market where all the good stuff is turned off, from the camera through the hotspot. How long will it be before the other manufacturer's products get locked down in the same way by IT, and the users perceive it as the phone's fault? Apple may be a "walled garden" now, but by the time some banks have finished with it, the iPhone 5 will be the fastest Nokia dumbphone on the market.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The Panasonic BU that I work for is also change from the Blackberry to an Android phone. Which one is still a rumor.
No one uses Monster but some may use Dice--via Indeed.
Seriously, who uses these sites directly anymore? RSS feeds from Indeed FTW.
BES stinks. BIS stinks. The whole Blackberry "dumbphone" concept stinks (the devices just don't work without RIM servers, billed to end users as an extra cost in your phone bill).
Blackberry's failure to adopt ActiveSync - which became nearly ubiquitous among smartphones several years ago - is a big part of their downfall.
Blackberry users have been paying more for less for far too long.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
Good news. As someone whose IT department supports BlackBerries, this trend can't spread fast enough. No offense to RIM but blackberries should have died out many years ago - and not that I like apple or droid so much, but they should have killed the BB off for corporate use. BlackBerries are terrible phones with inconsistent UIs, no slide out keyboards, changing usb cords, and are overly secure, nor does anyone who has one know how to use it.
Seems like a conspiracy by the powers that be to push Blackberry out of business, in favor of the google/apple iOS's that track and data-mine it's users for commercial gain..
Hmm!
Blackberry is the new "little guy" that apple used to be, everyone who's "hip" and "free" should go blackberry! Everyone who wants to be a mental slave to advertisers and the corporate machine should go android/iphone!
*ducks behind a wall*
Does *anyone* actually use Bing? I mean, other than on TV shows where they're paid to...
that's so 90s.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
No. Within a month, Mayer's replacement will probably reverse this decision. Don't worry though, as their replacement will probably reinstate it. Yahoo goes through more CEOs in five years than I went through toilet rolls during a particularly memorable trip to Tunisia.
RIM is so behind in the smartphone business it isn't funny. Anyways, another issue for having BlackBerry devices is that you have to have a BES server to do what you need. Android and iOS require no such server; you can just sync them directly with Exchange.
Better that RIM don't get to shoulder all that bad debt.
I wish I worked at a tech company that would do something like that for it's employees, although granted it is a work phone though... *shrugs*
I think RIM seriously needs to rethink their strategy when it comes to users and business which to them have been one and the same. Except while their infrastructure might have been the "bees knees" 5-10 years ago, it's old and unreliable to most of what people use today. for instance my parents used blackberries (despite my constant objections) up until their last phone upgrade a little less than 1 year ago. The Blackberry storms or storm 2's or something like that I think they had. Always having problems, screen popping out of the device (well that's a unit defect, but it happened more than once, even on replacements). Emails and texts not appearing for hours or even a day+ later, despite having a perfect signal. That was I believe due to RIMS network and not the carriers. Rim kinda does their own thing with your emails and texts and then sends them over to your carrier who sends them to your phone.. or that's how I thought it was.
That isn't much different from Google in a way, except Google actually works, and works very very well. If someone sends me a text or email and I have a usable data signal (doesn't need to be a perfect signal 3g or 4g) it will show up almost instantly on my phone or tablet or whatever I'm using. Rim.. I could text my parents and not get a response the entire day, go home and be like WTF didn't you respond and DING... there is my 12 hour old message finally arriving in their inbox, NOT COOL. and not a one off thing, this was a fairly common occurrence.
Then if you needed to fix anything on those damned things, good luck. They had clunky awful interfaces and ui's (especially compared to android phones and even the Iphones we have now. Trying to find the setting for some trivial little thing ended up turning into a test of patience and deciding whether or not to throw it through a wall. Everytime I have to touch one and see that god awful clickable screen... not like most new phones where you tap it to click.. i mean the screen was a damn button literally.. I cringe. Add to that it's closed source and who knows what Rim does on their network with your data or information you send through it's network and the fact that it can't run the majority of things out there, unless you love the $$$ verizon apps you could buy (unless rim has some new app market? anything better than what we already have with Google or apple or any 3rd party app stores, like on android? )?
I think this is something the company is doing right and I think a lot more companies need to take note and dump rim as well. RIM really needs to come out with something new and exciting instead of using the same old same old it always has.
jobs4point0, more likely....
wow 2 users!
At least RIM makes a decent product, even if noone wants it. I cant think of the last time I willingly went to yahoo... I guess people use it for fantasy football?
If Yahoo employees are like everyone else in the world, they won't be asking for Blackberries anyway.
#DeleteChrome
... and now they've been kicked in the groin!
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
http://sriramk.com/unsolicitedyahoo.html
(Yea, I am on HN too)
I'm beginning to like this Marissa as CEO, perhaps there is hope for Yahoo yet. Notice she volunteers on several boards of ballet companies and at least one museum. A true geek with taste. They make great CEO's IMO (I would not hire most of the posters here if I was on the board).
What's next, RIM employees stop using Yahoo for search and tell their employees to use Google or Bing?
Or maybe Marissa Mayer needs her minge mowing with a 42 ton semi right up the middle deader end of problem
But is None an option?
There is no such thing as "Yahoo search." The Yahoo search team was laid off years ago when the entire search function was outsourced to Microsoft (Bing).
Yeah, right.
Actually, Yahoo employees are taking training the former Navy signal corp members with signal flags. Yahoo is finding this much more efficient. RIM plans on having an app available of the next release (whenever that is) of the OS for their new phones for Yahoo employers can use them.