They make a simple mistake about predicting where the market will go, and sat on their laurels for a single season and now they are basically done.
Simple mistake? Single season? Really? When I first saw the iPhone unveiled, I declared that the world of communications had forever changed. Any company not recognizing that fact would die the bad death they deserved. RIM completely dismissed the iPhone and its significance. Heck, they didn't even think it was possible. They didn't just miss a single season either. By the time they realized the iPhone was the new definition of phone, they were already dead.
I never understood why there were co-CEOs. That tells me true lack of direction and management. RIM isn't going to disappear of course, but they are in some trouble.
The board of directors couldn't make up their minds
I used to think that an Apple buyout of RIM for their patents would make sense. I thought it was a perfect fit. For Apple to take Blackberry back to the business of building the best business smartphone around. With just one model ala the iPhone. Just one topnotch all purpose Blackberry business phone instead of wasting their resources building so many of the various variations on the same phone.
It's probably not worth it for Apple anymore as a new notification system is rumored to be on the way and as enterprise is quickly adopting the iPhone over the Blackberry. They had the ball and dropped it.
I still say they should scale back to just one phone and a business-centric specific tablet.
Simple mistake? Single season? Really? When I first saw the iPhone unveiled, I declared that the world of communications had forever changed. Any company not recognizing that fact would die the bad death they deserved. RIM completely dismissed the iPhone and its significance. Heck, they didn't even think it was possible. They didn't just miss a single season either. By the time they realized the iPhone was the new definition of phone, they were already dead.
Was there a comment from RiM saying the interface couldn?t possibly be that smooth and fast?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton
The board of directors couldn't make up their minds
Everything was so peachy, even the iPhone?s release making smartphones something the average person should consider pushed a lot of record breaking sales their way. The board likely didn?t know how bad of a storm was coming.
I don?t think RiM?s problems are with the co-CEOs so much as other key aspects of the company but I do think the Co-CEO thing has to stop.
Steve Jobs was dead on when he said convincing developers to support a third platform would be difficult. And this goes for the rumored new, from-the-ground-up Windows mobile OS too.
There's some history here too. When the NeXT was being released he fretted about this exact problem, as the development market quickly stratified. He noted that "this will be the last platform to succeed, or the first to fail".
I used to think that an Apple buyout of RIM for their patents would make sense. I thought it was a perfect fit. For Apple to take Blackberry back to the business of building the best business smartphone around. With just one model ala the iPhone. Just one topnotch all purpose Blackberry business phone instead of wasting their resources building so many of the various variations on the same phone.
It's probably not worth it for Apple anymore as a new notification system is rumored to be on the way and as enterprise is quickly adopting the iPhone over the Blackberry. They had the ball and dropped it.
I still say they should scale back to just one phone and a business-centric specific tablet.
Having one device for business and one for home is quickly becoming (or already is) obsolete. I don't want to have to carry one device around to do my corporate emailing, calendaring, and other various business things with another one in my pocket for all my personal stuff. I want to have one device that can handle both, has great battery life so I can actually do those things, and is secure and reliable. And that is why I have had an iPhone ever since it got released.
Having one device for business and one for home is quickly becoming (or already is) obsolete. I don't want to have to carry one device around to do my corporate emailing, calendaring, and other various business things with another one in my pocket for all my personal stuff. I want to have one device that can handle both, has great battery life so I can actually do those things, and is secure and reliable. And that is why I have had an iPhone ever since it got released.
I know what you mean. I just meant the Iphone is jack of all trades than can whip circles around Blackberies (other than email and messaging) but a dedicated business phone geared specific from the ground up for business professionals, with none of the trade-offs that a general purpose consumer product would offer. Such as a physical keyboard and only business specific apps. It would certainly be a niche market. I would get one. I already own two phones, an Iphone and a Blackberry.
Having one device for business and one for home is quickly becoming (or already is) obsolete. I don't want to have to carry one device around to do my corporate emailing, calendaring, and other various business things with another one in my pocket for all my personal stuff. I want to have one device that can handle both, has great battery life so I can actually do those things, and is secure and reliable. And that is why I have had an iPhone ever since it got released.
I beg to differ as I prefer one for business and one for personal. I am a strong believer that Tiger Woods got into trouble because he mixes business (Elin) with pleasure (All his mistresses) by using the same phone. If he had two devices dedicated for different purposes, Elin might not have seen the unabridged history of his sextexting.
Having one device for business and one for home is quickly becoming (or already is) obsolete. I don't want to have to carry one device around to do my corporate emailing, calendaring, and other various business things with another one in my pocket for all my personal stuff. I want to have one device that can handle both, has great battery life so I can actually do those things, and is secure and reliable. And that is why I have had an iPhone ever since it got released.
One phone for business and personal would be great, but in many places I don't think that will happen any time soon. The business security requirements mean that the platform is locked down much tighter than we would tolerate for personal phone use.
My business Blackberry is almost completely dysfunctional; it does corporate email and browses the web (badly), and everything else is locked to prevent security breaches. Can't install any apps and most of the settings are disabled. On the plus side, we are actually allowed to carry a device that makes phone calls where personal phones are excluded.
I'm not sure how the somewhat conflicting needs of personal and business will be reconciled.
While the current CEOs appear a bit clueless it does not follow that RIM will be more successful if they are replaced. All phone hardware companies are getting clobbered in terms of market share and/or profits with the exception of HTC and Apple. RIM has actually done pretty well at least treading water. The smart phones remain a very small share of the cell market so lots of opportunity to turn around.
Note while android had been a bigger share of each vendor's products the total vendor share of market and certainly profit has not improved. Basically android is displacing a static or decreasing share of Symbian and Windows CE. Apple is increasing real share in OS (ESP if you include all mobile elements) and gobbling all the profit.
The future for RIM will demand a deep change in core competencies (disruptive and destructive) to re-attack the new market environment. So the leadership, current or new, needs to take this on.
While Apple competition are trying to kill the iPhone and the iPad, Apple is silently killing their CEOs. Look at what happened to Acer's CEO, Google's CEO Eric Schmidt, and now RIM's and Microsoft's are facing a growing clamor for them to step down.
It just proves that breaking new grounds and innovating or authoring a new product segment AND NOT copying Apple might be a better alternative for these CEOs to stay in their jobs.
Simple mistake? Single season? Really? When I first saw the iPhone unveiled, I declared that the world of communications had forever changed. Any company not recognizing that fact would die the bad death they deserved. RIM completely dismissed the iPhone and its significance. Heck, they didn't even think it was possible. They didn't just miss a single season either. By the time they realized the iPhone was the new definition of phone, they were already dead.
Yeah, did the RIM engineers think Apple was lying about the iPhone capabilities when the iP1 was first introduced? I think I have that right.
Having one device for business and one for home is quickly becoming (or already is) obsolete. I don't want to have to carry one device around to do my corporate emailing, calendaring, and other various business things with another one in my pocket for all my personal stuff. I want to have one device that can handle both, has great battery life so I can actually do those things, and is secure and reliable. And that is why I have had an iPhone ever since it got released.
Me too! "Simplify" is my new motto! The latest iPhone, an iPad2 and old original intel iMac that I rarely use anymore, an AppleTV, TimeCapsule and I'm good to go! Sold my laptop and camera!
No laptop to keep updated, charged or remember to take with!
No stand alone GPS to charge, store and remember to take with! (TomTom App in iP4 is great)
No stand alone camera to charge, store and remember to take with!
No stand alone video camera to charge, store and remember to take with!
No iPod to charge, store and remember to take with!
Heck, even my Real Estate E-Key is in my iP4 now!
P.S. When my iMac gives up the ghost, probably will buy an MBA.
Financial advisors are only interested in profits not if a product is good or not. The biggest mistake that companies do is to go public and let these parasites bankers take control of their companies.
It is a case of mis-management for sure. The co-CEOs are under the impression that they invented the smartphone (and they kind of did), so they were ignorant to adapt their formula when Apple and Google invaded their space. Now they're losing something like 4% US marketshare per quarter.
Financial advisors are only interested in profits not if a product is good or not. The biggest mistake that companies do is to go public and let these parasites bankers take control of their companies.
Hmm. So companies should make great products that lose money? That'll show those nasty old analysts a thing or two.
Having one device for business and one for home is quickly becoming (or already is) obsolete. I don't want to have to carry one device around to do my corporate emailing, calendaring, and other various business things with another one in my pocket for all my personal stuff. I want to have one device that can handle both, has great battery life so I can actually do those things, and is secure and reliable. And that is why I have had an iPhone ever since it got released.
For what it's worth, in many markets (Canada for instance), Blackberry's are not just business machines and are sold to and used by a lot of very regular non-business people. They also have exceedingly high brand loyalty. Most of my non-technical friends use Blackberry's and most of them who are interested in tablets are deeply interested in the Playbook despite it being an extremely low-rated POS.
A lot of this comes down to the fact that if you don't read the tech press you don't have any idea what's going on beyond the advertisements and Blackberry pays a lot out for advertising (at least in Canada).
I had a conversation with a close family member just yesterday who is an extremely intelligent person, but who just happens to not care much about technology:
Person - "I like Blackberry's, I'm never giving mine up, ever."
Me - "Well, what about an iPad, do you like those?"
Person - "They look good, but If I bought a tablet I'd buy the Blackberry one. At least it has Flash!"
Me - "Flash is important to you?"
Person - "Not that much. But I heard that ancient guy that runs Apple *hates* Flash!"
Me - "Steve Jobs you mean?"
Person - "Yeah, the evil one. The old guy ... with the beard? I think that's his name anyway. Apparently the only reason the iPad doesn't run Flash is because he personally doesn't like it and he bans everyone from using it! He's supposed to be a real bastard or something."
It went on and on for quite a while but the gist of it is that this otherwise intelligent person, who's only knowledge of tech is from TV commercials (and what the guy at the cell phone store tells them), thought that Apple was a weird evil company headed by an ancient evil genius who has all kinds of mean rules and regulations that he likes to force people to obey. They believed that Apple's main purpose was to screw over "regular people" and make them use their technology even though "regular people" didn't want to!
They thought RIM on the other hand was a fantastic, innovative company that made leading edge products and was failing only because of some American plot to take over the cell phone market (or something).
Let's face it, the average person goes to the cell phone store and just buys whatever the shifty guy behind the counter says is the best thing to buy, and Apple doesn't pay those guys to promote their product like RIM and the rest of them do.
Comments
They make a simple mistake about predicting where the market will go, and sat on their laurels for a single season and now they are basically done.
Simple mistake? Single season? Really? When I first saw the iPhone unveiled, I declared that the world of communications had forever changed. Any company not recognizing that fact would die the bad death they deserved. RIM completely dismissed the iPhone and its significance. Heck, they didn't even think it was possible. They didn't just miss a single season either. By the time they realized the iPhone was the new definition of phone, they were already dead.
I never understood why there were co-CEOs. That tells me true lack of direction and management. RIM isn't going to disappear of course, but they are in some trouble.
The board of directors couldn't make up their minds
It's probably not worth it for Apple anymore as a new notification system is rumored to be on the way and as enterprise is quickly adopting the iPhone over the Blackberry. They had the ball and dropped it.
I still say they should scale back to just one phone and a business-centric specific tablet.
Not so much now.
Just talk with any developer who tried to get APIs from RIM before the iPhone showed up.
RIM was just plain arrogant and didn't care.
Now they are begging people to develop. Good luck with that.
And I say this as a RIM shareholder (albeit, with only 100 shares), but the hell with them!
Simple mistake? Single season? Really? When I first saw the iPhone unveiled, I declared that the world of communications had forever changed. Any company not recognizing that fact would die the bad death they deserved. RIM completely dismissed the iPhone and its significance. Heck, they didn't even think it was possible. They didn't just miss a single season either. By the time they realized the iPhone was the new definition of phone, they were already dead.
Was there a comment from RiM saying the interface couldn?t possibly be that smooth and fast?
The board of directors couldn't make up their minds
Everything was so peachy, even the iPhone?s release making smartphones something the average person should consider pushed a lot of record breaking sales their way. The board likely didn?t know how bad of a storm was coming.
I don?t think RiM?s problems are with the co-CEOs so much as other key aspects of the company but I do think the Co-CEO thing has to stop.
Steve Jobs was dead on when he said convincing developers to support a third platform would be difficult. And this goes for the rumored new, from-the-ground-up Windows mobile OS too.
There's some history here too. When the NeXT was being released he fretted about this exact problem, as the development market quickly stratified. He noted that "this will be the last platform to succeed, or the first to fail".
I used to think that an Apple buyout of RIM for their patents would make sense. I thought it was a perfect fit. For Apple to take Blackberry back to the business of building the best business smartphone around. With just one model ala the iPhone. Just one topnotch all purpose Blackberry business phone instead of wasting their resources building so many of the various variations on the same phone.
It's probably not worth it for Apple anymore as a new notification system is rumored to be on the way and as enterprise is quickly adopting the iPhone over the Blackberry. They had the ball and dropped it.
I still say they should scale back to just one phone and a business-centric specific tablet.
Having one device for business and one for home is quickly becoming (or already is) obsolete. I don't want to have to carry one device around to do my corporate emailing, calendaring, and other various business things with another one in my pocket for all my personal stuff. I want to have one device that can handle both, has great battery life so I can actually do those things, and is secure and reliable. And that is why I have had an iPhone ever since it got released.
Having one device for business and one for home is quickly becoming (or already is) obsolete. I don't want to have to carry one device around to do my corporate emailing, calendaring, and other various business things with another one in my pocket for all my personal stuff. I want to have one device that can handle both, has great battery life so I can actually do those things, and is secure and reliable. And that is why I have had an iPhone ever since it got released.
I know what you mean. I just meant the Iphone is jack of all trades than can whip circles around Blackberies (other than email and messaging) but a dedicated business phone geared specific from the ground up for business professionals, with none of the trade-offs that a general purpose consumer product would offer. Such as a physical keyboard and only business specific apps. It would certainly be a niche market. I would get one. I already own two phones, an Iphone and a Blackberry.
Having one device for business and one for home is quickly becoming (or already is) obsolete. I don't want to have to carry one device around to do my corporate emailing, calendaring, and other various business things with another one in my pocket for all my personal stuff. I want to have one device that can handle both, has great battery life so I can actually do those things, and is secure and reliable. And that is why I have had an iPhone ever since it got released.
I beg to differ as I prefer one for business and one for personal. I am a strong believer that Tiger Woods got into trouble because he mixes business (Elin) with pleasure (All his mistresses) by using the same phone. If he had two devices dedicated for different purposes, Elin might not have seen the unabridged history of his sextexting.
Having one device for business and one for home is quickly becoming (or already is) obsolete. I don't want to have to carry one device around to do my corporate emailing, calendaring, and other various business things with another one in my pocket for all my personal stuff. I want to have one device that can handle both, has great battery life so I can actually do those things, and is secure and reliable. And that is why I have had an iPhone ever since it got released.
One phone for business and personal would be great, but in many places I don't think that will happen any time soon. The business security requirements mean that the platform is locked down much tighter than we would tolerate for personal phone use.
My business Blackberry is almost completely dysfunctional; it does corporate email and browses the web (badly), and everything else is locked to prevent security breaches. Can't install any apps and most of the settings are disabled. On the plus side, we are actually allowed to carry a device that makes phone calls where personal phones are excluded.
I'm not sure how the somewhat conflicting needs of personal and business will be reconciled.
Note while android had been a bigger share of each vendor's products the total vendor share of market and certainly profit has not improved. Basically android is displacing a static or decreasing share of Symbian and Windows CE. Apple is increasing real share in OS (ESP if you include all mobile elements) and gobbling all the profit.
The future for RIM will demand a deep change in core competencies (disruptive and destructive) to re-attack the new market environment. So the leadership, current or new, needs to take this on.
It just proves that breaking new grounds and innovating or authoring a new product segment AND NOT copying Apple might be a better alternative for these CEOs to stay in their jobs.
Simple mistake? Single season? Really? When I first saw the iPhone unveiled, I declared that the world of communications had forever changed. Any company not recognizing that fact would die the bad death they deserved. RIM completely dismissed the iPhone and its significance. Heck, they didn't even think it was possible. They didn't just miss a single season either. By the time they realized the iPhone was the new definition of phone, they were already dead.
Yeah, did the RIM engineers think Apple was lying about the iPhone capabilities when the iP1 was first introduced? I think I have that right.
Having one device for business and one for home is quickly becoming (or already is) obsolete. I don't want to have to carry one device around to do my corporate emailing, calendaring, and other various business things with another one in my pocket for all my personal stuff. I want to have one device that can handle both, has great battery life so I can actually do those things, and is secure and reliable. And that is why I have had an iPhone ever since it got released.
Me too!
No laptop to keep updated, charged or remember to take with!
No stand alone GPS to charge, store and remember to take with! (TomTom App in iP4 is great)
No stand alone camera to charge, store and remember to take with!
No stand alone video camera to charge, store and remember to take with!
No iPod to charge, store and remember to take with!
Heck, even my Real Estate E-Key is in my iP4 now!
P.S. When my iMac gives up the ghost, probably will buy an MBA.
Best
I blogged a few months ago that the silver haired dude at RIM Lizardis or whatever should get ready to fly the coop.
Financial advisors are only interested in profits not if a product is good or not. The biggest mistake that companies do is to go public and let these parasites bankers take control of their companies.
Hmm. So companies should make great products that lose money? That'll show those nasty old analysts a thing or two.
Having one device for business and one for home is quickly becoming (or already is) obsolete. I don't want to have to carry one device around to do my corporate emailing, calendaring, and other various business things with another one in my pocket for all my personal stuff. I want to have one device that can handle both, has great battery life so I can actually do those things, and is secure and reliable. And that is why I have had an iPhone ever since it got released.
For what it's worth, in many markets (Canada for instance), Blackberry's are not just business machines and are sold to and used by a lot of very regular non-business people. They also have exceedingly high brand loyalty. Most of my non-technical friends use Blackberry's and most of them who are interested in tablets are deeply interested in the Playbook despite it being an extremely low-rated POS.
A lot of this comes down to the fact that if you don't read the tech press you don't have any idea what's going on beyond the advertisements and Blackberry pays a lot out for advertising (at least in Canada).
I had a conversation with a close family member just yesterday who is an extremely intelligent person, but who just happens to not care much about technology:
Person - "I like Blackberry's, I'm never giving mine up, ever."
Me - "Well, what about an iPad, do you like those?"
Person - "They look good, but If I bought a tablet I'd buy the Blackberry one. At least it has Flash!"
Me - "Flash is important to you?"
Person - "Not that much. But I heard that ancient guy that runs Apple *hates* Flash!"
Me - "Steve Jobs you mean?"
Person - "Yeah, the evil one. The old guy ... with the beard? I think that's his name anyway. Apparently the only reason the iPad doesn't run Flash is because he personally doesn't like it and he bans everyone from using it! He's supposed to be a real bastard or something."
It went on and on for quite a while but the gist of it is that this otherwise intelligent person, who's only knowledge of tech is from TV commercials (and what the guy at the cell phone store tells them), thought that Apple was a weird evil company headed by an ancient evil genius who has all kinds of mean rules and regulations that he likes to force people to obey. They believed that Apple's main purpose was to screw over "regular people" and make them use their technology even though "regular people" didn't want to!
They thought RIM on the other hand was a fantastic, innovative company that made leading edge products and was failing only because of some American plot to take over the cell phone market (or something).
Let's face it, the average person goes to the cell phone store and just buys whatever the shifty guy behind the counter says is the best thing to buy, and Apple doesn't pay those guys to promote their product like RIM and the rest of them do.