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Flatlining User Base May Spell End of RIM
Meshach writes "There is an article in the Globe and Mail that says that the user base for Blackberry has stopped growing for the first time in the company's history, and speculates that this is the beginning of the end of RIM. The main problem seems to be that RIM's new Blackberry models like the Bold and Torch are selling poorly, and their production costs are much higher than other products manufactured in China. A recent research report says that after BB10 the company will need to sell or drastically change its business model."
THIS is the beginning of the end of RIM?
It began a long time ago...
Don't forget that Android devices are ridiculously easy to lock down and set up with full encryption. There are actually companies out there whose entire business is doing just that for the corporate use scenario.
Its so stupidly easy to integrate Android with all of their existing email and even internal messaging apps(most of which are written in Java and trivially ported to native) that it beggars belief that they would consider much of anything else.
iPhone doesn't allow the kind of direct control that Corporate security demands, and WP7 has such a low penetration that no one is asking for it anyways. Android, even though there could definitely be better solutions, is currently the only real choice for corporate america. The worker drones get something that does everything an iPhone does(in some cases does it better, in some cases worse, but the important things are roughly the same, except for the GPS nav on android is much better) and they get their security.
1. Use Android
2. Enhance security; add exclusive BB apps.
3. Profit
No, no ??? needed. Just go straight to profit.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
1. Buy RIM for $10B
2. Sit on technologies for 3 years
3. ???
4. Sell what's left for 75 million
5. Profit!
RIM's main problem is that enterprise companies have started moving away from the platform. People don't want to carry around several smart phones and are much more eager to choose either iPhone or WP7 phones. Microsoft is known for being the office centric company and therefore has fantastic support for Exchange server and office apps. RIM lost the audience it had when Windows Phones were introduced (while Windows Mobile also had many work users, WP was a major improvement)..
While you present an interesting theory, reality is that noone is using Windows Phone. They had a market share of 3% of smartphones shipped. iPhone in particular and Android are the ones eating Blackberry's lunch. To make this even worse, this quarter Windows Phone is currently only sold on known obsolete phones. I'm glad I didn't get suckered into buying a phone that obsolete immediately, unlike Nexus Phones and iPhones.
Alternatively RIM has all but stopped creating new legacy phones, and anyone who *is* interested (at least in the north american market) is pretty much waiting for BB10 devices at this point.
Financials are out this week; it'll be interesting to see if global growth did actually stop.
RIM was hardly dead 5 years ago. Android wasn't out 5 years ago, it didn't come out until 2008. 5 years ago the iPhone was just coming out and it was hardly a business ready device. Do you remember the state of Palm phones and Windows Phone 5 years ago? I doubt it.
I really enjoyed my BlackBerry 5 years ago, it was an impressive device. Heck I enjoyed my BlackBerry 10 years ago. RIM was on top of the world. Shame its basically the same thing they sell today. Arrogance, ignorance, whatever their failing was. They're done today. Had they done something good 2 years ago, maybe a different story, but 2 years is a long time in this market.
since when is stagnation the beginning of the end? We have saturation and the mobile market become more and more an upgrade game.
Because the people closest to the situation have decided to leave.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Hire Carly?
..don't panic
Don't forget that Android devices are ridiculously easy to lock down and set up with full encryption. There are actually companies out there whose entire business is doing just that for the corporate use scenario.
Its so stupidly easy to integrate Android with all of their existing email and even internal messaging apps(most of which are written in Java and trivially ported to native) that it beggars belief that they would consider much of anything else.
iPhone doesn't allow the kind of direct control that Corporate security demands, and WP7 has such a low penetration that no one is asking for it anyways. Android, even though there could definitely be better solutions, is currently the only real choice for corporate america. The worker drones get something that does everything an iPhone does(in some cases does it better, in some cases worse, but the important things are roughly the same, except for the GPS nav on android is much better) and they get their security.
The iPhone Configurator allows corporations to manage iPhones. But even with that, the iPhone's data-at-rest encryption and Activesync compliance hisorically gave them a heads-up over other BYODs. In addition, third party apps for iOS / Android have provided more granular and non-managed security features. For Android it filled in encryption feature gaps which is no longer an issue on the latest devices. On the iPhone the biggest benefit of these apps was to sandbox corporate data from personal, including a remote wipe.
Don't forget that Android devices are ridiculously easy to lock down and set up with full encryption....
is currently the only real choice for corporate america.
Correct me if I am wrong, but you need to get a third party product to manage that centrally (would be interested to hear how youre doing it if not). Blackberries are STILL a good choice for corp america, if you really care about security.
You really cant compare Android's email security to BES's; Android can be tricked into disclosing email with ANY legit-signed SSL cert with the proper FQDN-- even if it was issued by the DOD or one of China's authorities. You CANNOT fool BES devices in the same way-- you must either crack the AES encryption on a per-device basis, or grab all the per-device keys from the server.
I get the whole "Oh noes BES is dying" thing, but they still have superior management, and they still have superior security. Perhaps thats not what is in vogue, and failing to adapt will kill BES, but lets not go overboard by comparing Android security to Blackberry.
Why would you think the IT people had any real input into this decision?
Last time Microsoft made an aggressive push to counter Apple et. al. in the workplace, they didn't target us lowly peons - they wined and dined presidents and CEOs. I recall several Microsoft-centric directives, a few years ago, coming from the office of our university's president regarding things like setting up a campus-wide Exchange service; they came roughly six months after our central IT department announced we were moving campus mail to Google Apps.
#DeleteChrome
Seven years ago was 2005. According to Wikipedia, RIM turned its first profit in 2004. So you appear to be saying that you declared Blackberry dead just when it started taking off. That is certainly possible, but it doesn't mean you are prescient, it means you are an idiot. In addition you comment that you thought their infrastructure was "cool for the beginning of the 90's", considering that the first device using RIM technology shipped in 1998, that means you thought their technology was obsolete when it first shipped. I could go on, but your comment suggests that you know nothing about the history of RIM
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Blue screens? Seriously? WTF are you running, some 7 year old plus XP installs? Its called let go of the fricking decade old patched all to hell creaky as fuck ancient history and get Windows 7 already! I have YET to see a Win 7 BSOD, I'm sure that they can happen, but its so rare that if I ever did see one I'd be checking for hardware failures, and I work on Windows machines 6 days a week. Hell even Vista for all its pains in the ass was extremely hard to BSOD unless you ran some alpha quality graphics driver and now even that doesn't crash Win 7, it simply restarts the graphics driver, doesn't even make you close any programs.
As for WP7? Unless the PHBs that do the buying were getting nice lunches with a MS marketer i don't see the selling point. The WP phones that are out don't have either the nicer displays of iPhone nor the nicer features of the Droid phones, has less apps than both of those, and from what I've been reading doesn't even have steller AD and group management which you think if nothing else MSFT would have gotten right, seeing how WinServer is their product and all.
Of course WinPhone suffers from the same myopic focus that MSFT has had of late, their insane consumer only focus that has them pushing brain dead ideas like Metro on Win 8 Pro, like business users want their workers with a tweeting, twitting, FB shitting social page for a start screen. Yep that will get them working, have constant FB updates and other crap distracting them...sigh. Ballmer makes the Pepsi guy's rein at Apple look like the work of a fricking genius. And if the past is any indication I hope they'll be ready to toss those phones when the next WinPhone version comes out because it probably won't get an update.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.