RIM has no ecosystem to speak of. WTF is the guy talking about?
BOGO can work wonders for a dying platform.
Increased sales of a dying, outclassed device is dangerous for the company. It gives them even greater reason to sit back and do nothing. RIM is in deeper crap than previously thought.
PS How many of those 14.2 shipments were actual sales out and registrations v sales into the channel, and how many of those were part of two for one deals, and how many models does RIM sell.
Normally, I would be inclined to give RIM the benefit of the doubt.... however it does seem a tad convenient that they post 14.2 million sales... compared to iPhones's recent 14.1.
After the recent cat fighting between the two (three!) CEOs, RIM would have every reason to bump a couple of hundred thousand Blackberrys into the channel. Let's see what their next quarters figures are.
You don't go and buy a Unix real time OS company like QNX and a user interface design company unless you have decided you don't have the internal talent to compete and you need fresh new folks and already built technology. RIM just did what Apple did when they bought NeXT. They admit they have no good OS and they are buying a company to get one. However, NeXT's claim to fame was their development environment. We are talking the most advanced devkit ever devised in computing history. Literally, decades ahead of it's time when it was originally released with NeXTStep. This is one reason by Apple's App Store is kicking so much butt. The development environment on the Mac is extremely good and it just keeps getting better. The dev environment on BlackBerry has been Java based which is, uh, Bleh...
RIM's hardware is under powered and their OS is slow, only the latest Torch have I noticed it running a little better. Their OS is Java based and it takes forever to reboot a BlackBerry and you end up having to do that quite a bit until there are enough OS updates to fix the bugs. Plus you have to wait for the slow carrier to even release the updates, unlike Apple who put's out an update and everyone can load it regardless of carrier. Many times, I have witnessed people pirating the OS for their BlackBerry because AT&T, Verizon, etc. won't release the update. The carrier wants you to buy a new phone. So you get to hear about it being released overseas but you will never see that version on your device! This is what the CEO meant about being carrier friendly....
The apps available for BlackBerry are terrible and they are expensive too. Everything feels like a hack on the BlackBerry. The Torch made some serious strides but the touch screen is so bad, I have to flip the keyboard out just to type on it. I am on my forth iPhone and iPad and I don't have any trouble typing on them. Why can't RIM make a touch screen sensitive enough to actually be useful? Android based touch is better than RIM but still not quite as good as Apple's.
The PlayBook is running QNX which is a commercial real time Unix suitable for running nuclear power plants, etc. It is fantastic tech! However, iOS is also Unix based. When iPhoneOS shipped on the first iPhone there was no development kit. Developers were told to do things web based. This didn't fly, developers wanted a full blown development environment and API. As soon as Apple released that devkit and the App Store, development exploded! What is RIM's development plan on the PlayBook? Why, Adobe AIR! Gee that sounds familiar! Air is nothing but HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Flash all thrown together. RIM is likely working on a C/C++ based devkit on QNX but they are years away from a decent API. Sure you've got the Unix development env on QNX already but it's not good enough and they need to add a whole new GUI layer with new widgets, etc. to give developers something like the iPhone dev env. Not like they are going to run X11 as a Window manager on the PlayBook. So they whipped up a quick and dirty interface that can multi-task and run AIR apps. Nothing but a fancy browser with sliding screens instead of browser tabs.
So yeah, no CEO is going to walk out and say, "We're 5 years away from being competitive". Nope, they are going out there and they are going to try to do the best they can....
It's all smoke and mirrors until they pull off the impossible, stay alive long enough to get the QNX dev kit up-to-speed. Get multi-core CPU's into your BlackBerry's. Write a whole new playbook on your user interface. Try to do all this before Apple simply pulls out advanced tech they have been sitting on and keeping secret. I bet Apple's two or three generations ahead of what's actually shipping today. I think there is an iPhone 5 and maybe 6 or seven in development as well as an iPad 2 or 3. I would not be surprised if there was a Dual Core custom A9 MIPS processor with advanced GPU being tested out with iOS. RIM doesn't have a chance in hell... They fell asleep at the switch and didn't wake until the 4th generation iPhone and iPad hit the street.
This quarterly report shows that the rebates in BOGOs do not affect the actual makers of the cellphones as much as it first would seem. The cost of the promotion is absorbed by someone ? but it does not seem to be the phone makers. So the BOGOs are not quite the race to the bottom that many imply.
Are you quite sure about that?
From the reports:
Unit sales 2010 v 2009:
14.1 - 10.1
Net income:
$ 911.1M - $ 796.7M
So, not totally scientific, but a 40% increase in sales has yielded only 14% increase in profit.
Speaking of Palm, the assumed release of the PlayBook after February and right around the time of the assume release of the next iPad strikes me as foolish as Palm releasing their Palm Pre days before the iPhone 3GS launched. I can?t help but think that a late Summer, early Autumn tablet release with an additional 6 months of making it a great product might be needed if they want this to succeed in the long term.
I bet Apple will have everything lined up so if they want to move their intended release up to usurp RiM? well, we all know Jobs isnt? above such things, especially after RiM?s specious comments, and it would be entertaining for us.
I agree, the timing really stupid. But I don't think Apple will need to change plans. That kind of launch timing will kill the product, anyway. If this thing is launched a month before iPad 2, only fools, the GROSSLY uninformed, and those pre-disposed to avoid Apple products will purchase it before waiting to see what the iPad 2 will deliver. RIM really better hope this thing is hugely popular with the business customers who haven't explored other smart phone solutions.
Maybe they are waiting until the iPad 2 comes out, so they can up-date it, change it, fix it, so it WILL be better then the iPad2, when they release it for sale, which by the way, won't be until the iPad3 hits the streets, so they can see what they'll need to change to make it, faster, smaller or bigger, thinner, lighter, better battery life so on then the iPad 3, but wait ? it won't be released then either, rumor has it that Apple is coming out with the All New & Improved iPad4!
Release the damn thing, and let folks decided if it is any good. You can do just like Apple and other companies and come out with up-grades and new features in the second generation of your pad/ tablet thingie.
You can tell RIM is in trouble. The numbers on the surface seem impressive. However, new subscriber growth is dramatically slowing. Further, RIM said it wouldn't report that number anymore. You don't report a number when you are nervous about it.
..........don't forget Alan Sugars' assertion in 2005, "this time next year the iPod will be finished/dead/nowhere/kaput"
You know, I left the UK 21 years ago and I have never heard of Alan Sugar since, hence I didn't even know this quote. I remember him only as a discount gadget maker then early crappy micros along with Sinclair... I was a a student at Uni when I had an Amstrad amp for my flat's so called 'Hi Fi'. I Googled him after your post and discovered he went on to become a Knight and a bully on a TV show. Amazing what I missed.
I would hope that a prototype of a device to be released next year is faster than a device released 9 months ago. That's just the way processor technology works and has absolutely nothing to do with one platform being ahead of another. And you can be pretty certain that Apple will have a comparable processor in the iPad 2, but will also find a way to have longer battery life than the RIM device.
This is the second time I've heard a company excuse their inability to compete with the app store by trying to claim people don't really want an app store as if not having apps is somehow supposed to be an advantage, never mind that that iPad can also run HTML5 apps.
I also noticed in their demo from last month that on the iPad they type out ".com" instead of hitting the .com button on the keyboard.
Why can't he just be honest and say we think we can be a competitive player in the tablet-space. Anything else just sounds like a lie, and when you lie you loose my interest.
He should have said: "People who want a different approach to Apple's and don't want to be tied into Apple's world can come pick up a Playbook. We believe the iPad is too heavy for most people, the Playbook is a light alternative."
That statement would sell more Playbooks. Just don't lie. And don't name your product after a nude magazine, name it after women's things.
You know, I left the UK 21 years ago and I have never heard of Alan Sugar since, hence I didn't even know this quote. I remember him only as a discount gadget maker then early crappy micros along with Sinclair... I was a a student at Uni when I had an Amstrad amp for my flat's so called 'Hi Fi'. I Googled him after your post and discovered he went on to become a Knight and a bully on a TV show. Amazing what I missed.
There was a report in a local rag in the UK around the mid 90s that one of Amstrads' PCW machines, in full working order, was left outside the journos' home in an urban area, in full unobstructed view and it was still there 48 hours later.................the article was on PC/Mac theft from the workplace.
I am in no way inferring PlayBook inferiority here!
i only observed how many times he used "i think". check it out.
nobody care what he thinks though.
I had the same exact feeling about it! I couldn't get past all his "thinking" to see how a product, that I had never heard about till this forum, was really so much better than a freakin' Barnes and Noble Nook, which I also had never heard about until yesterday! Talk about a big ego!
Speaking of Palm, the assumed release of the PlayBook after February and right around the time of the assume release of the next iPad strikes me as foolish as Palm releasing their Palm Pre days before the iPhone 3GS launched. I can?t help but think that a late Summer, early Autumn tablet release with an additional 6 months of making it a great product might be needed if they want this to succeed in the long term.
They need to get it out the door now, not wait another 6 months after February.
Seriously, Apple could do with releasing 4.3 around late January with some performance improvements to mobile Safari. I do find it a little sluggish, especially caching. But a tweaked Safari on iPad 1 would be well ahead of the Playbook.
Well ahead in what sense? You can't make stuff like that up, because they are random guesses. The caching issue with the iPad is a RAM issue - i.e. not enough. iPad will solve that. iPad 1 users gonna have to suffer. Good job my brother is buying my iPad 1 from me for a good price and I'm upgrading.
Comments
BOGO can work wonders for a dying platform.
Increased sales of a dying, outclassed device is dangerous for the company. It gives them even greater reason to sit back and do nothing. RIM is in deeper crap than previously thought.
PS How many of those 14.2 shipments were actual sales out and registrations v sales into the channel, and how many of those were part of two for one deals, and how many models does RIM sell.
Normally, I would be inclined to give RIM the benefit of the doubt.... however it does seem a tad convenient that they post 14.2 million sales... compared to iPhones's recent 14.1.
After the recent cat fighting between the two (three!) CEOs, RIM would have every reason to bump a couple of hundred thousand Blackberrys into the channel. Let's see what their next quarters figures are.
But... But... 14.2 million Blackberries is an impressive number...!
On it's own, yes. But it's only a 35% increase YoY.
Rim's previous 3 quarters were all over 40% ... and the smartphone market, as a whole is growing at around 70%.
Rim just lost another chunk of market share.
RIM's hardware is under powered and their OS is slow, only the latest Torch have I noticed it running a little better. Their OS is Java based and it takes forever to reboot a BlackBerry and you end up having to do that quite a bit until there are enough OS updates to fix the bugs. Plus you have to wait for the slow carrier to even release the updates, unlike Apple who put's out an update and everyone can load it regardless of carrier. Many times, I have witnessed people pirating the OS for their BlackBerry because AT&T, Verizon, etc. won't release the update. The carrier wants you to buy a new phone. So you get to hear about it being released overseas but you will never see that version on your device! This is what the CEO meant about being carrier friendly....
The apps available for BlackBerry are terrible and they are expensive too. Everything feels like a hack on the BlackBerry. The Torch made some serious strides but the touch screen is so bad, I have to flip the keyboard out just to type on it. I am on my forth iPhone and iPad and I don't have any trouble typing on them. Why can't RIM make a touch screen sensitive enough to actually be useful? Android based touch is better than RIM but still not quite as good as Apple's.
The PlayBook is running QNX which is a commercial real time Unix suitable for running nuclear power plants, etc. It is fantastic tech! However, iOS is also Unix based. When iPhoneOS shipped on the first iPhone there was no development kit. Developers were told to do things web based. This didn't fly, developers wanted a full blown development environment and API. As soon as Apple released that devkit and the App Store, development exploded! What is RIM's development plan on the PlayBook? Why, Adobe AIR! Gee that sounds familiar! Air is nothing but HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Flash all thrown together. RIM is likely working on a C/C++ based devkit on QNX but they are years away from a decent API. Sure you've got the Unix development env on QNX already but it's not good enough and they need to add a whole new GUI layer with new widgets, etc. to give developers something like the iPhone dev env. Not like they are going to run X11 as a Window manager on the PlayBook. So they whipped up a quick and dirty interface that can multi-task and run AIR apps. Nothing but a fancy browser with sliding screens instead of browser tabs.
So yeah, no CEO is going to walk out and say, "We're 5 years away from being competitive". Nope, they are going out there and they are going to try to do the best they can....
It's all smoke and mirrors until they pull off the impossible, stay alive long enough to get the QNX dev kit up-to-speed. Get multi-core CPU's into your BlackBerry's. Write a whole new playbook on your user interface. Try to do all this before Apple simply pulls out advanced tech they have been sitting on and keeping secret. I bet Apple's two or three generations ahead of what's actually shipping today. I think there is an iPhone 5 and maybe 6 or seven in development as well as an iPad 2 or 3. I would not be surprised if there was a Dual Core custom A9 MIPS processor with advanced GPU being tested out with iOS. RIM doesn't have a chance in hell... They fell asleep at the switch and didn't wake until the 4th generation iPhone and iPad hit the street.
This quarterly report shows that the rebates in BOGOs do not affect the actual makers of the cellphones as much as it first would seem. The cost of the promotion is absorbed by someone ? but it does not seem to be the phone makers. So the BOGOs are not quite the race to the bottom that many imply.
Are you quite sure about that?
From the reports:
Unit sales 2010 v 2009:
14.1 - 10.1
Net income:
$ 911.1M - $ 796.7M
So, not totally scientific, but a 40% increase in sales has yielded only 14% increase in profit.
Speaking of Palm, the assumed release of the PlayBook after February and right around the time of the assume release of the next iPad strikes me as foolish as Palm releasing their Palm Pre days before the iPhone 3GS launched. I can?t help but think that a late Summer, early Autumn tablet release with an additional 6 months of making it a great product might be needed if they want this to succeed in the long term.
I bet Apple will have everything lined up so if they want to move their intended release up to usurp RiM? well, we all know Jobs isnt? above such things, especially after RiM?s specious comments, and it would be entertaining for us.
I agree, the timing really stupid. But I don't think Apple will need to change plans. That kind of launch timing will kill the product, anyway. If this thing is launched a month before iPad 2, only fools, the GROSSLY uninformed, and those pre-disposed to avoid Apple products will purchase it before waiting to see what the iPad 2 will deliver. RIM really better hope this thing is hugely popular with the business customers who haven't explored other smart phone solutions.
<Co-CEO says PlayBook "way ahead" of iPad".>
Jim Balsillie has just ensured his immortality along with Michael Dell and his 'give the Apple share holders their money back' statement.
..........don't forget Alan Sugars' assertion in 2005, "this time next year the iPod will be finished/dead/nowhere/kaput"
Release the damn thing, and let folks decided if it is any good. You can do just like Apple and other companies and come out with up-grades and new features in the second generation of your pad/ tablet thingie.
Skip
..........don't forget Alan Sugars' assertion in 2005, "this time next year the iPod will be finished/dead/nowhere/kaput"
You know, I left the UK 21 years ago and I have never heard of Alan Sugar since, hence I didn't even know this quote. I remember him only as a discount gadget maker then early crappy micros along with Sinclair... I was a a student at Uni when I had an Amstrad amp for my flat's so called 'Hi Fi'. I Googled him after your post and discovered he went on to become a Knight and a bully on a TV show. Amazing what I missed.
This is the second time I've heard a company excuse their inability to compete with the app store by trying to claim people don't really want an app store as if not having apps is somehow supposed to be an advantage, never mind that that iPad can also run HTML5 apps.
I also noticed in their demo from last month that on the iPad they type out ".com" instead of hitting the .com button on the keyboard.
He should have said: "People who want a different approach to Apple's and don't want to be tied into Apple's world can come pick up a Playbook. We believe the iPad is too heavy for most people, the Playbook is a light alternative."
That statement would sell more Playbooks. Just don't lie. And don't name your product after a nude magazine, name it after women's things.
You know, I left the UK 21 years ago and I have never heard of Alan Sugar since, hence I didn't even know this quote. I remember him only as a discount gadget maker then early crappy micros along with Sinclair... I was a a student at Uni when I had an Amstrad amp for my flat's so called 'Hi Fi'. I Googled him after your post and discovered he went on to become a Knight and a bully on a TV show. Amazing what I missed.
There was a report in a local rag in the UK around the mid 90s that one of Amstrads' PCW machines, in full working order, was left outside the journos' home in an urban area, in full unobstructed view and it was still there 48 hours later.................the article was on PC/Mac theft from the workplace.
I am in no way inferring PlayBook inferiority here!
My blood is percolating! My first investment of 2011.... SHORT RIM!!!!!
Great insight with that investment there.
i only observed how many times he used "i think". check it out.
nobody care what he thinks though.
Speaking of Palm, the assumed release of the PlayBook after February and right around the time of the assume release of the next iPad strikes me as foolish as Palm releasing their Palm Pre days before the iPhone 3GS launched. I can?t help but think that a late Summer, early Autumn tablet release with an additional 6 months of making it a great product might be needed if they want this to succeed in the long term.
They need to get it out the door now, not wait another 6 months after February.
Seriously, Apple could do with releasing 4.3 around late January with some performance improvements to mobile Safari. I do find it a little sluggish, especially caching. But a tweaked Safari on iPad 1 would be well ahead of the Playbook.
Well ahead in what sense? You can't make stuff like that up, because they are random guesses. The caching issue with the iPad is a RAM issue - i.e. not enough. iPad will solve that. iPad 1 users gonna have to suffer. Good job my brother is buying my iPad 1 from me for a good price and I'm upgrading.