I'm almost willing to bet that Apple's share price won't be helped favorably by this news. I'll bet that Wall Street will see the fall of RIM to be a bigger boost to Android smartphones and Google will get the benefit. I'm not exactly sure why, but somehow Wall Street will figure out that Android smartphones are eating into RIM's market share and not the iPhone even though most enterprises are running pilot projects of iPhone vs BlackBerry smartphones. They'll immediately assume that Android will be able to better the iPhone's iMessaging system despite Android not even having it yet. Wall Street is always going to give Android the benefit of the doubt in growth and not iOS and there is something really wrong with that attitude.
RIM really looks to be on the outs with both smartphones and it's lone tablet. That's a pretty quick fall and I wonder if they'll be able to recover in a year or so. Apple will be able to deliver a comparable push messaging service to RIM's BES on both the iPhone and iPad, so that could really hurt BES sales.
I agree with this, but more on the lines that when the tide lowers, all ships go with it.
I disagree. That used to be true, though I think the status of a BB faded long ago.
It's not a status symbol, but it is a security symbol - like a comfort blanket. An enterprise that uses BB keeps control over its own email, and this is a huge deal. A friend of mine is a banker at a top investment bank, he owns a US iPhone, a UK iPhone and has a corporate blackberry for email. I'm sure he'd love to be able to get rid of the BB, but until Apple can match RIM's email offering he won't be able to.
Microsoft appear smarter than BB. Yes, they late with Windows 8 on the tablet market, but at least thay don't rush with not ready product, like BB PlayBook. Releasing PlayBook in its current state was the Epic Fail for BB.
Uh...WHAT???
Microsoft is the KING of shipping not ready products. THE KING.
It's their core business strategy:
1. Follow a competitor into a new market
2. Put version 1.0 out there to compete. Get laughed at.
3. Add features year after year. Turn it into a features wars.
4. Competitor (sometimes) screws up, fumbles the ball
Microsoft is the KING of shipping not ready products. THE KING.
It's their core business strategy:
Actually I think their core strategy is to announce a product years early and bluff people into thinking they're about to ship a not-ready product. I don't think they ever ship products early, which isn't to say they don't ship them bugged as hell - I just don't think they'd be any better if they'd shipped them later
Sad to see a company so poorly managed. RIM was complacent. Some of my family and friends have BB's and they are so cheap looking with their plastic shiny buttons. A friend went to Paris and didn't want to take her laptop...just BB. She ended up calling me to go over to her house and fwd her emails to her. I did and she could not open them on her BB. I ended up reading her emails to her so she could see which were important. As it turns out, none were important. But what a messy way to do things...at least she didn't ask me to print the emails and "FAX" them to her! Ugh! :
Nevertheless, all those laid-off RIM people and their families. I feel for them.
My late CEO father used to say, in business (and even more so in tech), if you're not growing, you're dying!
i have to carry a cheap BB Curve for work. can't do much with it but the plastic is strong. never had a case for it, dropped it many times on concrete and other hard surfaces and it only has a few scratches. my iphones and ipads would never survive that. they might be pretty but the cheap plastic is a lot stronger than glass
Assume that they're shopping for a partner/parent, who might be interested?
Microsoft: MS have made noises about making their own handsets and tablets, this would get them straight in. They could rapidly switch RIM over to Bing to build mobile search market share, and eventually move them over to WP7. It would piss off their partners, but then their partners are already either being strong-armed with license fees or are so desperate that they don't have another option.
Nokia: While the mergers of two drowning firms is never pretty ( HP/Compaq anybody?) this might not be totally doomed. RIM have better software than Nokia (who doesn't?) and a loyal enterprise base. RIM would give Nokia an alternative to WP7, Nokia would give RIM deeper pockets.
Apple: Very unlikely because Apple hasn't done a big transformative merger since it bought NeXT, but not completely impossible. RIM has experience selling to enterprise, which is something that Apple lacks. Apple could rapidly switch over RIM users to iOS if it could just integrate the key security features and secure email services, also RIM would help solidify Apple's position in the patent wars - especially if they manage to acquire the Nortel patents.
Oracle: Now we're entering Sci-Fi territory, but Oracle is a very strange firm and very willing to grow by merger. They are already fighting Android on a java infringement case, and wouldn't be stepping on any significant partners - only HP and they aren't exactly bosom buddies right now anyway. Oracle have wanted a way to break MS's control over the desktop and mobile increasingly looks like a good way to do so, but they have no mobile presence or experience. Oracle CRM tightly integrated to a tablet like the playbook could produce significant sales.
One day in the future when RIM is a "Do you remember" company, I'm sure someone will make a little device with lots of tiny plastic button for folks to play with as a novelty item. It'll be kind of like the way some people love to play with a Commodore 64. The term I'm looking for is nostalgia I think.
i have to carry a cheap BB Curve for work. can't do much with it but the plastic is strong. never had a case for it, dropped it many times on concrete and other hard surfaces and it only has a few scratches. my iphones and ipads would never survive that. they might be pretty but the cheap plastic is a lot stronger than glass
My son-in-law is a project manager for a major corporate event planner/producer. He travels around the country producing and managing corporate meetings, shows, things similar to WWDC and the like. His company has already switched to iPhones and iPads. He notices the same thing with many of the companies who are his customers. Apple is indeed making inroads in the enterprise and RIM is getting the boot in many cases. My son-in-law doesn't see much Android in his corporate dealings.
So RIM have a time machine too? Why are they running a year ahead?
In some countries such as Canada, Australia and Japan, the financial year runs over 12 months from a date other than January first. This moves the often considerable burden of financial reporting for companies and personal income tax assessment for individuals away from the festive season. In Canada, the financial year runs April 1 - March 31, Australia July 1 - June 30 etc. Clever.
I think it would be a leap too far for Dell. Dell's market cap is only $30B, so at current prices RIM wouldn't be affordable once a buy-out premium was applied. Dell doesn't have deep enough pockets to pay for serious product development that RIM needs and it doesn't have any in-house expertise at to apply.
However I did miss
IBM:
Big Blue is a huge enterprise shop with a reputation for security and reliability. They have an ageing email platform in Lotus Notes that fits well with the kind of users who buy BB. They have deep pockets and a lot of experience producing enterprise software. They've done big mergers in the past, and seem to be able to execute them reasonably well. On the flip side they sold their thinkpad business to Lenovo and it's unlikely that they want to buy into another mass market hardware business after that - but Blackberry is a hardware business married to a prop OS, and that does make them a possible.
Well I would necessarily want Apple to buy, BUT if Apple had the chance to buy some of RIM's assets I'd say got for it.
QNX is a REALLY nicely design OS, all its lacking is a pretty GUI on top. Mac OS X could learn a lot from QNX!
z3r0
No offence but this is nonsense. QNX is a microkernel architecture intended for embedded devices and has little to no advantages over straight Unix in terms of mobile OS's. iOS has one of the most solid, time-tested pure Unix cores to build on with OS-X and wouldn't gain anything by switching to QNX instead.
Also, putting the "pretty GUI on top" is pretty much the entire game. It's taken Apple somewhere between four and eight years to tack the "pretty GUI" onto iOS's kernel. Your suggesting they start all over, but for what?
Assume that they're shopping for a partner/parent, who might be interested?
Microsoft: MS have made noises about making their own handsets and tablets, this would get them straight in. They could rapidly switch RIM over to Bing to build mobile search market share, and eventually move them over to WP7. It would piss off their partners, but then their partners are already either being strong-armed with license fees or are so desperate that they don't have another option.
Nokia: While the mergers of two drowning firms is never pretty ( HP/Compaq anybody?) this might not be totally doomed. RIM have better software than Nokia (who doesn't?) and a loyal enterprise base. RIM would give Nokia an alternative to WP7, Nokia would give RIM deeper pockets.
Apple: Very unlikely because Apple hasn't done a big transformative merger since it bought NeXT, but not completely impossible. RIM has experience selling to enterprise, which is something that Apple lacks. Apple could rapidly switch over RIM users to iOS if it could just integrate the key security features and secure email services, also RIM would help solidify Apple's position in the patent wars - especially if they manage to acquire the Nortel patents.
Oracle: Now we're entering Sci-Fi territory, but Oracle is a very strange firm and very willing to grow by merger. They are already fighting Android on a java infringement case, and wouldn't be stepping on any significant partners - only HP and they aren't exactly bosom buddies right now anyway. Oracle have wanted a way to break MS's control over the desktop and mobile increasingly looks like a good way to do so, but they have no mobile presence or experience. Oracle CRM tightly integrated to a tablet like the playbook could produce significant sales.
Anybody I missed?
Perhaps HP. Think RIM for business, Palm for consumer. WebOS to run on both.
My son-in-law is a project manager for a major corporate event planner/producer. He travels around the country producing and managing corporate meetings, shows, things similar to WWDC and the like. His company has already switched to iPhones and iPads. He notices the same thing with many of the companies who are his customers. Apple is indeed making inroads in the enterprise and RIM is getting the boot in many cases. My son-in-law doesn't see much Android in his corporate dealings.
... and later this year, when RIM fires the CEO's and 'restructures' Apple will be sitting pretty with a drop in BBM replacement ('iMessage').
Because its a BlackBerry. They have a strong brand in the business world. Many of my classmates in business school bought blackberries over iPhones and Androids just because they were blackberries and business people use blackberries.
Ah yes. MBA types.
True visionaries. Think I'll take my lead from them.
Comments
It's RIM's first quarter of fiscal 2012.
So RIM have a time machine too? Why are they running a year ahead?
I'm almost willing to bet that Apple's share price won't be helped favorably by this news. I'll bet that Wall Street will see the fall of RIM to be a bigger boost to Android smartphones and Google will get the benefit. I'm not exactly sure why, but somehow Wall Street will figure out that Android smartphones are eating into RIM's market share and not the iPhone even though most enterprises are running pilot projects of iPhone vs BlackBerry smartphones. They'll immediately assume that Android will be able to better the iPhone's iMessaging system despite Android not even having it yet. Wall Street is always going to give Android the benefit of the doubt in growth and not iOS and there is something really wrong with that attitude.
RIM really looks to be on the outs with both smartphones and it's lone tablet. That's a pretty quick fall and I wonder if they'll be able to recover in a year or so. Apple will be able to deliver a comparable push messaging service to RIM's BES on both the iPhone and iPad, so that could really hurt BES sales.
I agree with this, but more on the lines that when the tide lowers, all ships go with it.
So RIM have a time machine too? Why are they running a year ahead?
A better question is: If they're running a year ahead, why are their phones still five years behind?
I disagree. That used to be true, though I think the status of a BB faded long ago.
It's not a status symbol, but it is a security symbol - like a comfort blanket. An enterprise that uses BB keeps control over its own email, and this is a huge deal. A friend of mine is a banker at a top investment bank, he owns a US iPhone, a UK iPhone and has a corporate blackberry for email. I'm sure he'd love to be able to get rid of the BB, but until Apple can match RIM's email offering he won't be able to.
Microsoft appear smarter than BB. Yes, they late with Windows 8 on the tablet market, but at least thay don't rush with not ready product, like BB PlayBook. Releasing PlayBook in its current state was the Epic Fail for BB.
Uh...WHAT???
Microsoft is the KING of shipping not ready products. THE KING.
It's their core business strategy:
1. Follow a competitor into a new market
2. Put version 1.0 out there to compete. Get laughed at.
3. Add features year after year. Turn it into a features wars.
4. Competitor (sometimes) screws up, fumbles the ball
5. (Sometimes) Win.
Uh...WHAT???
Microsoft is the KING of shipping not ready products. THE KING.
It's their core business strategy:
Actually I think their core strategy is to announce a product years early and bluff people into thinking they're about to ship a not-ready product. I don't think they ever ship products early, which isn't to say they don't ship them bugged as hell - I just don't think they'd be any better if they'd shipped them later
Sad to see a company so poorly managed. RIM was complacent. Some of my family and friends have BB's and they are so cheap looking with their plastic shiny buttons. A friend went to Paris and didn't want to take her laptop...just BB. She ended up calling me to go over to her house and fwd her emails to her. I did and she could not open them on her BB. I ended up reading her emails to her so she could see which were important. As it turns out, none were important. But what a messy way to do things...at least she didn't ask me to print the emails and "FAX" them to her! Ugh! :
Nevertheless, all those laid-off RIM people and their families. I feel for them.
My late CEO father used to say, in business (and even more so in tech), if you're not growing, you're dying!
i have to carry a cheap BB Curve for work. can't do much with it but the plastic is strong. never had a case for it, dropped it many times on concrete and other hard surfaces and it only has a few scratches. my iphones and ipads would never survive that. they might be pretty but the cheap plastic is a lot stronger than glass
He also expects Google to "copy" the feature for Android phones "as quickly as it can."
Google has GoogleTalk. Talks to other Android phones. this has been out for years. Not as old as BBM, but what exactly does google have to copy?
Assume that they're shopping for a partner/parent, who might be interested?
Microsoft: MS have made noises about making their own handsets and tablets, this would get them straight in. They could rapidly switch RIM over to Bing to build mobile search market share, and eventually move them over to WP7. It would piss off their partners, but then their partners are already either being strong-armed with license fees or are so desperate that they don't have another option.
Nokia: While the mergers of two drowning firms is never pretty ( HP/Compaq anybody?) this might not be totally doomed. RIM have better software than Nokia (who doesn't?) and a loyal enterprise base. RIM would give Nokia an alternative to WP7, Nokia would give RIM deeper pockets.
Apple: Very unlikely because Apple hasn't done a big transformative merger since it bought NeXT, but not completely impossible. RIM has experience selling to enterprise, which is something that Apple lacks. Apple could rapidly switch over RIM users to iOS if it could just integrate the key security features and secure email services, also RIM would help solidify Apple's position in the patent wars - especially if they manage to acquire the Nortel patents.
Oracle: Now we're entering Sci-Fi territory, but Oracle is a very strange firm and very willing to grow by merger. They are already fighting Android on a java infringement case, and wouldn't be stepping on any significant partners - only HP and they aren't exactly bosom buddies right now anyway. Oracle have wanted a way to break MS's control over the desktop and mobile increasingly looks like a good way to do so, but they have no mobile presence or experience. Oracle CRM tightly integrated to a tablet like the playbook could produce significant sales.
Anybody I missed?
Dell.
i have to carry a cheap BB Curve for work. can't do much with it but the plastic is strong. never had a case for it, dropped it many times on concrete and other hard surfaces and it only has a few scratches. my iphones and ipads would never survive that. they might be pretty but the cheap plastic is a lot stronger than glass
So.... pretty useless but hard to destroy.
So RIM have a time machine too? Why are they running a year ahead?
In some countries such as Canada, Australia and Japan, the financial year runs over 12 months from a date other than January first. This moves the often considerable burden of financial reporting for companies and personal income tax assessment for individuals away from the festive season. In Canada, the financial year runs April 1 - March 31, Australia July 1 - June 30 etc. Clever.
All the best.
Dell.
I think it would be a leap too far for Dell. Dell's market cap is only $30B, so at current prices RIM wouldn't be affordable once a buy-out premium was applied. Dell doesn't have deep enough pockets to pay for serious product development that RIM needs and it doesn't have any in-house expertise at to apply.
However I did miss
IBM:
Big Blue is a huge enterprise shop with a reputation for security and reliability. They have an ageing email platform in Lotus Notes that fits well with the kind of users who buy BB. They have deep pockets and a lot of experience producing enterprise software. They've done big mergers in the past, and seem to be able to execute them reasonably well. On the flip side they sold their thinkpad business to Lenovo and it's unlikely that they want to buy into another mass market hardware business after that - but Blackberry is a hardware business married to a prop OS, and that does make them a possible.
Anybody I missed?
Reminds me of the punch line to an old joke....
...something about pince-nez glasses, a "violator" and "Look around Big Joe, and see if we missed anybody".
Well I would necessarily want Apple to buy, BUT if Apple had the chance to buy some of RIM's assets I'd say got for it.
QNX is a REALLY nicely design OS, all its lacking is a pretty GUI on top. Mac OS X could learn a lot from QNX!
z3r0
No offence but this is nonsense. QNX is a microkernel architecture intended for embedded devices and has little to no advantages over straight Unix in terms of mobile OS's. iOS has one of the most solid, time-tested pure Unix cores to build on with OS-X and wouldn't gain anything by switching to QNX instead.
Also, putting the "pretty GUI on top" is pretty much the entire game. It's taken Apple somewhere between four and eight years to tack the "pretty GUI" onto iOS's kernel. Your suggesting they start all over, but for what?
The term I'm looking for is nostalgia I think.
So are they
Assume that they're shopping for a partner/parent, who might be interested?
Microsoft: MS have made noises about making their own handsets and tablets, this would get them straight in. They could rapidly switch RIM over to Bing to build mobile search market share, and eventually move them over to WP7. It would piss off their partners, but then their partners are already either being strong-armed with license fees or are so desperate that they don't have another option.
Nokia: While the mergers of two drowning firms is never pretty ( HP/Compaq anybody?) this might not be totally doomed. RIM have better software than Nokia (who doesn't?) and a loyal enterprise base. RIM would give Nokia an alternative to WP7, Nokia would give RIM deeper pockets.
Apple: Very unlikely because Apple hasn't done a big transformative merger since it bought NeXT, but not completely impossible. RIM has experience selling to enterprise, which is something that Apple lacks. Apple could rapidly switch over RIM users to iOS if it could just integrate the key security features and secure email services, also RIM would help solidify Apple's position in the patent wars - especially if they manage to acquire the Nortel patents.
Oracle: Now we're entering Sci-Fi territory, but Oracle is a very strange firm and very willing to grow by merger. They are already fighting Android on a java infringement case, and wouldn't be stepping on any significant partners - only HP and they aren't exactly bosom buddies right now anyway. Oracle have wanted a way to break MS's control over the desktop and mobile increasingly looks like a good way to do so, but they have no mobile presence or experience. Oracle CRM tightly integrated to a tablet like the playbook could produce significant sales.
Anybody I missed?
Perhaps HP. Think RIM for business, Palm for consumer. WebOS to run on both.
My son-in-law is a project manager for a major corporate event planner/producer. He travels around the country producing and managing corporate meetings, shows, things similar to WWDC and the like. His company has already switched to iPhones and iPads. He notices the same thing with many of the companies who are his customers. Apple is indeed making inroads in the enterprise and RIM is getting the boot in many cases. My son-in-law doesn't see much Android in his corporate dealings.
... and later this year, when RIM fires the CEO's and 'restructures' Apple will be sitting pretty with a drop in BBM replacement ('iMessage').
Because its a BlackBerry. They have a strong brand in the business world. Many of my classmates in business school bought blackberries over iPhones and Androids just because they were blackberries and business people use blackberries.
Ah yes. MBA types.
True visionaries. Think I'll take my lead from them.