As a Canadian I feel sad about this. It seems like it's been a never ending stream of great companies - Corel, ATI, Nortel, and now RIM that reach a certain level of success and then get gobbled up by the American behemoths down south. ...
Every Canadian feels sad about how the US constantly dominates us in the business markets (even though we are in far better shape economically) but your list is incorrect.
You are blending four companies on a list that all had different reasons for their demise.
Corel was most certainly "gobbled up" by the US and destroyed by the tactics of companies like Adobe, but their product was substandard at best. The only reason to keep it around was the whole anti-competition thing (which seems like it would have been a great move in hindsight, since Adobe now rules all). The fact is however, that Capitalism has no real mechanisms for "fair" competition built in to it, and that this is just the way of the world today. ATI was the victim of similar anti-competitive behaviour and mergers as well.
Nortel's huge market value was acquired almost exclusively through the same process of mergers and dubious behaviour that sunk Corel and ATI, but this time, Nortel was the one taking the smaller companies to the cleaners and absorbing them. Nortel ultimately failed, but primarily because of internal corruption and it had nothing to do with the USA.
RIM's failure is the least controversial and most obvious of all. They simply failed to adapt to a changing market by producing a competing product. They ignored all warnings to that effect until it was too late, then they finally came up with products that were just not that good. There is nothing underhanded about this at all.
So while there *is* a lot of anti-competitive head-butting and absorbing of other companies going on, it happens on both sides of the border and doesn't really explain the demise of RIM at all.
RIM isn't going anywhere anytime soon. They are still heavy in the enterprise market. Maybe they spin off their consumer market.
Normally I'd agree with you, but we have a number of enterprise clients who are abandoning the practice of purchasing Blackberry devices for their employees and allowing them to bring their own. Overwhelmingly, they have iPhones. This is a cost saving for the enterprise when looking to reduce overhead.
Apple might gain a lot if they bought RIM, just for patents. RIM also has a lot of business and enterprise features that will make it much easier to implement into iOS.
It's really amazing to see 360degrees turn from 5 years ago. Now all companies that were kings of smartphones are disappearing.
Yeesh, I always wonder what they pay these guys who put out the most obvious "news". I think any faithful reader of this site to come up with the same thing reading comments buried in postings here, yet this mug gets paid to act original.
Is the enterprise market big enough to generate profits that can fund the kind of R&D that RIM needs to keep up with Apple, Google & (maybe) Microsoft? Remember, RIMs problems are rooted in their failure to keep pace with the rival smart phones' technology.
It's not R&D money that's at issue.
Apple spends less on R&D as a percentage than all other companies in the smartphone business by a very large margin. Apple's people are actually just smarter and more creative.
There are many companies out there (esp. military and government contractors and pharma companies), that spend enormous amounts of money on R&D with essentially no results. The reason in the military and government cases is because R&D is a rabbit hole in the budget down which much corruption flows. The reason in the case of the pharma companies is that it allows them to grossly inflate the cost of their products because they can claim to be "paying off" the giant R&D funds from the previous budgetary years.
R&D budgets, especially outside of the hard tech industries, often operate (in fact most always do), as giant slush funds for the companies in question. This works because there is no accountability on such budgets, and there is literally no downside at all if you can roll the cost into the product without anyone choking.
This is partly why a bottle of aspirin who's chemical formula hasn't changed for a hundred years and costs five cents to manufacture, costs $5.95.
What a pointless news story. I notice you didn't bother to add anything about Android 'steamrolling' iOS, as it will inevitably continue to do.
Android will steamroll all over iOS just after it is done steamrolling all over Android manufacturers, and Google.
Honestly, no one is getting hurt by Android more than people who are invested in it. Google just spent over 8Bn (ex-cash) buying a loss making company, spent many other billions buying patents from IBM, and will probably end up paying Oracle a ton more after that lawsuit is settled, all to protect hasty decisions made while creating Android.
Samsung, HTC, etc. will keep alternating between losses/profits as they compete with each other in an inevitable race to the bottom, since they have nothing to differentiate with.
There are a few of those WOW events in consumer computing history I recall vividly, such as hearing recognizable speech come from a computer (rather than beep), seeing a photo quality picture on a computer screen (Mac II), and sending email while sitting at a soccer field using a Blackberry (so cool!).
These are all common now. Blackberry has brought some great ideas and products to the corporate world. It is a shame to see them fall.
Not that I'm giving up my iPhone for a Blackberry!
Motorola Mobility is at least 'just' a HW vendor with patents.
BB brings the headaches of supporting a waning enterprise business support model, and a crapload of dissatisifed consumers.
Why would anyone buy RIMM... no great technology, and a customer base that is quite willing to migrate off the platform to others as soon as their contracts are up.
Apple could merge iMessage with BBM. That would handily stable RIM's one trick pony into the Apple barn.
BBM is so poorly designed that RIM couldnt merge it into one of their OWN products (the Playbook). I don't think iMessage and BBM will even get a first date.
Normally I'd agree with you, but we have a number of enterprise clients who are abandoning the practice of purchasing Blackberry devices for their employees and allowing them to bring their own. Overwhelmingly, they have iPhones. This is a cost saving for the enterprise when looking to reduce overhead.
+1
The only enterprise value of RIM was BES. Once corps start realizing that they can stop making enterprise email the only place to
Now, for security BES/BB is pretty solid, but for most corps, email security (contents, not auth) is a minor issue. Given that you can VPN from an iPhone and/or build up Citrix VM access, most of these issues are becoming moot (why worry about in-app encryption, esp. on an iPhone, when you can just push your users to your corp network for really secure stuff).
Sharepoint and equivs will further obviate BB. my consulting corp uses it to great advantage. pop a file in the the share, automatically notifications go out to the team. having a poor browser/app or the requirement of BES in SMBs will drive most people to a iPhone/Android device.
Not that I recommend Android for Business, unless the business _owns_ the device, which defeats the purpose...
HA! And in other breaking news, the Honda Civic is expected to "steamroll" the new Fiat in domestic US sales. OF COURSE the iPhone is going to kill anyone that goes up against it. You have basically one top of the line product running a very solid iOS versus 18 kajillion Android/Mango/whatever else products that all look and are named something so similar no one can decipher heads from tails. I pay attention to phones and I couldn't tell you what is a new Andriod phone and which is last years model, or what each one is good at.
That is why I think a lot of people but the iPhone. It is ONE phone running ONE op system. If you have a question about how to do something, you can find help easily. None of this "well I also have an HTC phone, but to get there on my phone you go under sub menu 18...blah blah blah".
You immediately shut the company down. Absorb the patents, absorb any talent, everything else is discontinued.
Wow! I can't believe you wrote that....Just kill RIM because you got their patents and force thousands of people to lose their jobs!!! Man you are whats wrong with corporate america...
Apple cannot announce the new iPhone and iPod Touch until after Sept. 20 when the Back to school promotion expires.
LOL, you really think that?
So all the times that Apple announced new iPods before the BTS promotion ended in the U.K.… just didn't happen then, huh? And I suppose Apple DIDN'T honor the promotion and DIDN'T give people the new models for free.
Guess that just didn't happen.
And you also seem to have forgotten that the BTS promotion has NOTHING TO DO with the iPods this year, so your point is even more meaningless.
Quote:
Originally Posted by geekdad
Wow! I can't believe you wrote that....Just kill RIM because you got their patents and force thousands of people to lose their jobs!!! Man you are whats wrong with corporate america...
Hey, I said absorb the talent. Keep the people that matter. It's not like they'll keep having their jobs in a year anyway. RIM's bleeding chips.
As a Canadian I feel sad about this. It seems like it's been a never ending stream of great companies - Corel, ATI, Nortel, and now RIM that reach a certain level of success and then get gobbled up by the American behemoths down south.
I use an iPhone at work, mostly because our President wanted one and I had to support it - but 99% of our users run Blackberry's. I honestly think Blackberry's are a better product in the corporate world, but as we all know Apple is the media darling so gets all the headlines and therefore mindshare.
If you believe that the reason Apple is so popular is because of it's media darling status, you're in as much denial as Lazaridis. Being the media darling is the result not the cause. Apple makes great products and that it the real cause.
You don't just become the media darling out of thin air, you have to have a story to tell. I used probably 5 blackberries in my life and it was good for what it was...... But RIM was a laurel rester, they became complacent and when they were challenged, the results were inevitable.
They did not move fast enough when they were on top; no product diversification, very little innovation and did not pursue the consumer market as aggressively!
You immediately shut the company down. Absorb the patents, absorb any talent, everything else is discontinued.
i see your point but in my experience in a situation such as this, you don't want to spend more money than you have to, and if RIM is indeed going down, then you wait until they go bankrupt and then buy their assets in BK court. Others may try to buy before that, but again, in my experience, it would be foolish and irresponsible to throw a couple more million or even billion at a company to get the patents, when you could have them for pennies on the dollar in court.
So all the times that Apple announced new iPods before the BTS promotion ended in the U.K.? just didn't happen then, huh? And I suppose Apple DIDN'T honor the promotion and DIDN'T give people the new models for free.
Guess that just didn't happen.
And you also seem to have forgotten that the BTS promotion has NOTHING TO DO with the iPods this year, so your point is even more meaningless.
Hey, I said absorb the talent. Keep the people that matter. It's not like they'll keep having their jobs in a year anyway. RIM's bleeding chips.
And if you're going to absorb talent, why not poach them beforehand? Their contracts are not tied to whether the company is bought or not. If they don't like Apple, they can just quit. There's no guarantee they will be "absorbed"
It would be far more advantageous to get the talent on a onesie twosie basis of a salary, plus benefits, than spend billions to buy a company to find out who they are and then negotiate and maybe get them to come to Cupertino. Doesn't make sense.
As a Canadian I feel sad about this. It seems like it's been a never ending stream of great companies - Corel, ATI, Nortel, and now RIM that reach a certain level of success and then get gobbled up by the American behemoths down south.
I use an iPhone at work, mostly because our President wanted one and I had to support it - but 99% of our users run Blackberry's. I honestly think Blackberry's are a better product in the corporate world, but as we all know Apple is the media darling so gets all the headlines and therefore mindshare.
I can sympathize with you here (tho I am "south of the border" ). The problem is not that Apple has "gobbled up" RIMM, but rather that RIMM shot itself in the foot - and now the head it seems.
They had an opportunity to move forward with good, well designed products, but they blew it big time. Nokia came to them (or so I have read) offering to join together with MeeGo a Linux based alternative that was free of exterior motivations/entanglements. But they rejected that out of what I can only see as pride and arrogance. They had no experience in developing real GUI operating systems, and they thought they could just jump in and do it. That was big-time foolish.
Apple does not care about competition. They welcome it (as long as it does not rip off their IP). They compete by their drive to develop the best products, incorporating the greatest technology. They are happy to do this.
But RIMM just flubbed big time. I agree - kinda sad.
Comments
As a Canadian I feel sad about this. It seems like it's been a never ending stream of great companies - Corel, ATI, Nortel, and now RIM that reach a certain level of success and then get gobbled up by the American behemoths down south. ...
Every Canadian feels sad about how the US constantly dominates us in the business markets (even though we are in far better shape economically) but your list is incorrect.
You are blending four companies on a list that all had different reasons for their demise.
Corel was most certainly "gobbled up" by the US and destroyed by the tactics of companies like Adobe, but their product was substandard at best. The only reason to keep it around was the whole anti-competition thing (which seems like it would have been a great move in hindsight, since Adobe now rules all). The fact is however, that Capitalism has no real mechanisms for "fair" competition built in to it, and that this is just the way of the world today. ATI was the victim of similar anti-competitive behaviour and mergers as well.
Nortel's huge market value was acquired almost exclusively through the same process of mergers and dubious behaviour that sunk Corel and ATI, but this time, Nortel was the one taking the smaller companies to the cleaners and absorbing them. Nortel ultimately failed, but primarily because of internal corruption and it had nothing to do with the USA.
RIM's failure is the least controversial and most obvious of all. They simply failed to adapt to a changing market by producing a competing product. They ignored all warnings to that effect until it was too late, then they finally came up with products that were just not that good. There is nothing underhanded about this at all.
So while there *is* a lot of anti-competitive head-butting and absorbing of other companies going on, it happens on both sides of the border and doesn't really explain the demise of RIM at all.
RIM isn't going anywhere anytime soon. They are still heavy in the enterprise market. Maybe they spin off their consumer market.
Normally I'd agree with you, but we have a number of enterprise clients who are abandoning the practice of purchasing Blackberry devices for their employees and allowing them to bring their own. Overwhelmingly, they have iPhones. This is a cost saving for the enterprise when looking to reduce overhead.
It's really amazing to see 360degrees turn from 5 years ago. Now all companies that were kings of smartphones are disappearing.
What a world.
Is the enterprise market big enough to generate profits that can fund the kind of R&D that RIM needs to keep up with Apple, Google & (maybe) Microsoft? Remember, RIMs problems are rooted in their failure to keep pace with the rival smart phones' technology.
It's not R&D money that's at issue.
Apple spends less on R&D as a percentage than all other companies in the smartphone business by a very large margin. Apple's people are actually just smarter and more creative.
There are many companies out there (esp. military and government contractors and pharma companies), that spend enormous amounts of money on R&D with essentially no results. The reason in the military and government cases is because R&D is a rabbit hole in the budget down which much corruption flows. The reason in the case of the pharma companies is that it allows them to grossly inflate the cost of their products because they can claim to be "paying off" the giant R&D funds from the previous budgetary years.
R&D budgets, especially outside of the hard tech industries, often operate (in fact most always do), as giant slush funds for the companies in question. This works because there is no accountability on such budgets, and there is literally no downside at all if you can roll the cost into the product without anyone choking.
This is partly why a bottle of aspirin who's chemical formula hasn't changed for a hundred years and costs five cents to manufacture, costs $5.95.
What a pointless news story. I notice you didn't bother to add anything about Android 'steamrolling' iOS, as it will inevitably continue to do.
Android will steamroll all over iOS just after it is done steamrolling all over Android manufacturers, and Google.
Honestly, no one is getting hurt by Android more than people who are invested in it. Google just spent over 8Bn (ex-cash) buying a loss making company, spent many other billions buying patents from IBM, and will probably end up paying Oracle a ton more after that lawsuit is settled, all to protect hasty decisions made while creating Android.
Samsung, HTC, etc. will keep alternating between losses/profits as they compete with each other in an inevitable race to the bottom, since they have nothing to differentiate with.
These are all common now. Blackberry has brought some great ideas and products to the corporate world. It is a shame to see them fall.
Not that I'm giving up my iPhone for a Blackberry!
So who's gonna buy RIM?
Sounds to me like Google might try.
I think Apple certainly aught to.
'Sounds'?
who is making such sounds?
What would RIM bring to GOOG's table?
Motorola Mobility is at least 'just' a HW vendor with patents.
BB brings the headaches of supporting a waning enterprise business support model, and a crapload of dissatisifed consumers.
Why would anyone buy RIMM... no great technology, and a customer base that is quite willing to migrate off the platform to others as soon as their contracts are up.
Apple could merge iMessage with BBM. That would handily stable RIM's one trick pony into the Apple barn.
BBM is so poorly designed that RIM couldnt merge it into one of their OWN products (the Playbook). I don't think iMessage and BBM will even get a first date.
Normally I'd agree with you, but we have a number of enterprise clients who are abandoning the practice of purchasing Blackberry devices for their employees and allowing them to bring their own. Overwhelmingly, they have iPhones. This is a cost saving for the enterprise when looking to reduce overhead.
+1
The only enterprise value of RIM was BES. Once corps start realizing that they can stop making enterprise email the only place to
Now, for security BES/BB is pretty solid, but for most corps, email security (contents, not auth) is a minor issue. Given that you can VPN from an iPhone and/or build up Citrix VM access, most of these issues are becoming moot (why worry about in-app encryption, esp. on an iPhone, when you can just push your users to your corp network for really secure stuff).
Sharepoint and equivs will further obviate BB. my consulting corp uses it to great advantage. pop a file in the the share, automatically notifications go out to the team. having a poor browser/app or the requirement of BES in SMBs will drive most people to a iPhone/Android device.
Not that I recommend Android for Business, unless the business _owns_ the device, which defeats the purpose...
Are you KIDDING ME?!
Buy them FOR THE PATENTS.
Then what?????? Now you have their patents...Then what!! Now you have a dying company with competing products that you have now.....so next step????
Then what?????? Now you have their patents...Then what!! Now you have a dying company with competing products that you have now.....so next step????
Seriously, are you people joking?
You immediately shut the company down. Absorb the patents, absorb any talent, everything else is discontinued.
Also, I believe they will not announce until they have a real lock down on iOS - i.e. it passes the SQA Department.
That is why I think a lot of people but the iPhone. It is ONE phone running ONE op system. If you have a question about how to do something, you can find help easily. None of this "well I also have an HTC phone, but to get there on my phone you go under sub menu 18...blah blah blah".
Seriously, are you people joking?
You immediately shut the company down. Absorb the patents, absorb any talent, everything else is discontinued.
Wow! I can't believe you wrote that....Just kill RIM because you got their patents and force thousands of people to lose their jobs!!! Man you are whats wrong with corporate america...
Apple cannot announce the new iPhone and iPod Touch until after Sept. 20 when the Back to school promotion expires.
LOL, you really think that?
So all the times that Apple announced new iPods before the BTS promotion ended in the U.K.… just didn't happen then, huh? And I suppose Apple DIDN'T honor the promotion and DIDN'T give people the new models for free.
Guess that just didn't happen.
And you also seem to have forgotten that the BTS promotion has NOTHING TO DO with the iPods this year, so your point is even more meaningless.
Wow! I can't believe you wrote that....Just kill RIM because you got their patents and force thousands of people to lose their jobs!!! Man you are whats wrong with corporate america...
Hey, I said absorb the talent. Keep the people that matter. It's not like they'll keep having their jobs in a year anyway. RIM's bleeding chips.
As a Canadian I feel sad about this. It seems like it's been a never ending stream of great companies - Corel, ATI, Nortel, and now RIM that reach a certain level of success and then get gobbled up by the American behemoths down south.
I use an iPhone at work, mostly because our President wanted one and I had to support it - but 99% of our users run Blackberry's. I honestly think Blackberry's are a better product in the corporate world, but as we all know Apple is the media darling so gets all the headlines and therefore mindshare.
If you believe that the reason Apple is so popular is because of it's media darling status, you're in as much denial as Lazaridis. Being the media darling is the result not the cause. Apple makes great products and that it the real cause.
You don't just become the media darling out of thin air, you have to have a story to tell. I used probably 5 blackberries in my life and it was good for what it was...... But RIM was a laurel rester, they became complacent and when they were challenged, the results were inevitable.
They did not move fast enough when they were on top; no product diversification, very little innovation and did not pursue the consumer market as aggressively!
Seriously, are you people joking?
You immediately shut the company down. Absorb the patents, absorb any talent, everything else is discontinued.
i see your point but in my experience in a situation such as this, you don't want to spend more money than you have to, and if RIM is indeed going down, then you wait until they go bankrupt and then buy their assets in BK court. Others may try to buy before that, but again, in my experience, it would be foolish and irresponsible to throw a couple more million or even billion at a company to get the patents, when you could have them for pennies on the dollar in court.
JMHO.
LOL, you really think that?
So all the times that Apple announced new iPods before the BTS promotion ended in the U.K.? just didn't happen then, huh? And I suppose Apple DIDN'T honor the promotion and DIDN'T give people the new models for free.
Guess that just didn't happen.
And you also seem to have forgotten that the BTS promotion has NOTHING TO DO with the iPods this year, so your point is even more meaningless.
Hey, I said absorb the talent. Keep the people that matter. It's not like they'll keep having their jobs in a year anyway. RIM's bleeding chips.
And if you're going to absorb talent, why not poach them beforehand? Their contracts are not tied to whether the company is bought or not. If they don't like Apple, they can just quit. There's no guarantee they will be "absorbed"
It would be far more advantageous to get the talent on a onesie twosie basis of a salary, plus benefits, than spend billions to buy a company to find out who they are and then negotiate and maybe get them to come to Cupertino. Doesn't make sense.
As a Canadian I feel sad about this. It seems like it's been a never ending stream of great companies - Corel, ATI, Nortel, and now RIM that reach a certain level of success and then get gobbled up by the American behemoths down south.
I use an iPhone at work, mostly because our President wanted one and I had to support it - but 99% of our users run Blackberry's. I honestly think Blackberry's are a better product in the corporate world, but as we all know Apple is the media darling so gets all the headlines and therefore mindshare.
I can sympathize with you here (tho I am "south of the border"
They had an opportunity to move forward with good, well designed products, but they blew it big time. Nokia came to them (or so I have read) offering to join together with MeeGo a Linux based alternative that was free of exterior motivations/entanglements. But they rejected that out of what I can only see as pride and arrogance. They had no experience in developing real GUI operating systems, and they thought they could just jump in and do it. That was big-time foolish.
Apple does not care about competition. They welcome it (as long as it does not rip off their IP). They compete by their drive to develop the best products, incorporating the greatest technology. They are happy to do this.
But RIMM just flubbed big time. I agree - kinda sad.