
RIM implodes: announces layoffs, 500,000 PlayBooks shipped - shawndumas
http://www.loopinsight.com/2011/06/16/rim-implodes-announces-layoffs-500000-playbooks-shipped/
======
programminggeek
Whenever I hear about MSFT, Nokia, or RIM struggling to catch up to the
incredible lead that Apple has, I remember back in 2007 when Steve Jobs said
basically "the iPhone is at least 3 years ahead of everything else in the
market."

It took about 3 years for most of the competition to catch up to what the
iPhone launched as. Microsoft kept trying to ride the WP 6 train hoping the
iPhone was going to flop and not become the next iPod. Eventually they had to
do a major rewrite which put them a few years behind of iPhone. Oops.
Blackberry Storm and Torch are both still below par and not even competitive
against Android devices, let alone iPhone. Nokia never caught up at all with
the iPhone.

Similar story is playing out with the iPad. Android is catching up on
hardware, but not software ecosystem. Maybe that will be different in a year,
but the market could certainly shape up to be more like the iPod dominance of
music players than the iPhone/Android dominance of phones. Windows 8 will
launch when? 2 or 3 years after the iPad. Sound familiar? Blackberry Playbook
is out, but that's such a mess it's not worth discussing.

Steve Jobs was right back in 2007 and most of the market is still 2-3 years
behind where Apple is.

~~~
paul9290
Lately I feel Apple is behind Google's Android.

There are many decisions Jobs and company have made that for me has made
Android look more attractive. I currently own an iPhone and have so for over a
year now, but there are things I want it to do that it can not while Android
can. When my contract is up Im getting a Nexus or EVO.

I want to enjoy flash, i want to truly run apps in the background, i want the
ability to have voice search on home screen via click of a button, i dont want
to have to go through sync process when i connect iPhone ( i dont want to find
out how to stop sync), I want Google's awesome built in GPS and I want the
ability for more customization.

Ive enjoyed my iPhone but playing with girlfriend's Droid X2 and her prior
Droid Incredible just showed me Im on the wrong platform. Though Apple's
customer service is almost unmatched - will miss that.

They have hordes of cash now but to me with what I mentioned above maybe Apple
is truly headed down and destined to repeat it's own history?

~~~
olivercameron
To each his own. I enjoy simplicity on my phone, excellent battery life, and
the odd game, as such, I use an iPhone. It doesn't mean that either way is
right, but it also doesn't mean that Apple is destined to repeat their
failures.

Bare in mind that although Android outsells iPhone's, Apple still has 40% of
the profit of the entire smartphone industry.

~~~
kenjackson
Ppl always repeat the profit of Apple, but why? What exactly is that relevant
to, unless you're a shareholder or Apple employee? Is it just a comment to
indicate that Apple isn't about to go out of business?

 _To each his own._

This is really the important statement. Phones are in a state now that I think
we can actually have 3 viable OSes in the market. I know families where the
dad has a BB, the mom an iPhone, and a child an Android (or Sidekick back in
the day), and no one cares. It's not like PCs.

When I go and look at a WebOS device or WP7 I'm not worried about the fact
that they have small market share. For the most part it doesn't matter that
much to me as a consumer. Sure WP7 only has 20,000 apps. But unless you're
Robert Scoble, you'll be more than happy (and if you're Robert Scoble, apps
don't even count until you hit 500k).

It's a very different world, and I think we'll see things evolve quite
differently.

~~~
YooLi
_"Is it just a comment to indicate that Apple isn't about to go out of
business?"_

Partially, and partially to indicate that the way Apple is doing things must
be at least somewhat right and sustainable.

Why is it so hard for Android manufacturers to release updates for their
phones? Because they don't make enough on them to continue supporting them.
They make money on new devices sales, so they keep churning out more new
handsets.

~~~
kenjackson
_partially to indicate that the way Apple is doing things must be at least
somewhat right and sustainable._

Just an odd concern for an end user, IMO. When I go to buy a car I don't look
at the profits of Honda vs Ford. Sure you may not want a company that will go
bankrupt, but even if they did the impact really isn't all that huge.

 _Why is it so hard for Android manufacturers to release updates for their
phones?_

Because they make deeply integrated skins. They have to reintegrate the skin
with a new drop from Google -- not on their schedule, but on Google's (that's
when customers start screaming for the update).

 _Because they don't make enough on them to continue supporting them. They
make money on new devices sales, so they keep churning out more new handsets._

Everyone makes money on new device sales. The difference is if you get an iOS
device -- Apple gets the profit. HTC/Samsung/Moto/LG/etc have to compete for
the next sale, even if you've already decided it will be Android.

~~~
olivercameron
Of course you don't think about Apple's share of profit when you're buying the
iPhone, but when you're discussing the iPhone's long term future, the fact it
makes an immense amount of profit is very much relevant.

~~~
bad_user
To me, when discussing the long term future of an OS, a very valuable metric
is how many companies are using it to build their hardware.

Apple is ridding the wave, releasing kick-ass products one after another; but
you never know how tomorrow will look like for Apple. On the other hand, if
Samsung stops making Android devices or goes out of business, there are others
to fill in.

So it's not really so cut and dry.

------
RobIsIT
1\. RIM needs to to stop trying to be Apple. I'm not saying ditch the touch
screen completely, but they need to stop following so closely in Apple's
product development footsteps.

2\. RIM needs to stop being shy about where they manufacture their products.
They need to bring manufacturing completely (as in 100%) in to North America
and advertise the heck out of that. Apple relies on inexpensive, cheap labor -
hit them in the marketing cahones.

3\. RIM needs to build a profitable developer marketplace. The only reason
anyone cares about iOS Apps is because there is a chance small developers can
make a lot of money developing. RIM needs to create a system where developers
can easily earn money. From in-app purchases, to a robust in-app ad serving
platform to flexible purchasing options, RIM needs to take a giant step back
and let a developer develop any app they want and charge any way they want.

4\. RIM needs to remember that it is first and foremost, a hardware company.
They've _never_ been good at making pretty software that works well. Palm,
Handspring, HP, Microsoft, and Apple have all at one time or another beat RIM
time and again with software - but rarely hardware. Mobile Internet Devices
don't need to be complicated or even revolutionary - they just need to be
sturdy, refined and fashionable. Forget about saving money on Curve keyboards,
forget about trying to breakthrough some crappy "clicking screen", build
really great hardware, even if that hardware doesn't conform to the latest
trends.

5\. Last, RIM needs to kick cellular providers in the butt. They need to step
up where Apple hasn't and make their consumer level data plans inexpensive,
open and user friendly.

~~~
dantheman
Do people actually care about where the product is manufactured? I don't, as
long as they're not using slave labor etc; I actually think outsourcing
improves the standard of living around the world and provides me a better
product at a lower price.

~~~
jberryman
Of course. For many people "buy American" is a mantra. People from car makers
to American Apparel try to tap into this sentiment. (obviously the degree to
which something was actually "made in the USA" is not always clear)

~~~
joezydeco
You do know RIM is headquartered in Canada, right?

------
ssharp
Blackberry became the big name in smartphones by making emailing dead simple.
In the middle part of last decade, that's what mattered. People were mostly
used to mobile phones for making calls, the occasional text message, and maybe
a stupid game or two.

When RIM made emailing from the road a very simple process, and created an
enterprise-class system for businesses, their brand hit its peak. When they
tried to leverage themselves into the consumer market, they did have some
initial success. But when they were starting to actually jump into the pond--
after dipping their toes in--Apple came in and sucker punched the entire
market in January 2007.

All of a sudden, big players like RIM were behind the curve, figuratively and,
for RIM, literally.

They essentially had a 6-month period to get phones that could compete with
Apple and nobody really did a good job. The first iPhone was very vulnerable--
no native apps, EDGE, and big price tag--but by the time anyone could offer an
iPhone-like experience, Apple had the 3G, native apps, and a lower price tag.

RIM seemed to simply take too long to close their gaps. Their first
touchscreen had a hugely misplaced marketing campaign. When RIM released the
Storm, they made their SureTouch (or whatever it's called) screen a huge
focus. Differentiation is certainly a product strategy, but it seemed like a
fairly ridiculous thing to try to base your marketing around. At the time, a
lot of people were weary of touchscreens vs. physical keyboards, but the added
"value" of the SureTouch didn't come close to a physical keyboard and hindered
the use of the touchscreen.

It seems like RIM's major problems were with product design / development,
coupled with bad marketing. They controlled the business market, which helped
drive the consumer market, and then lost control of it.

~~~
zmmmmm
I think you hit the nail on the head with email. So much is about perception
and not technology. When people think about Blackberry they think about email
and business. That's it. They don't imagine awesome fun games or music players
or videos or cameras even though the blackberry (in theory) has all those.

Nokia has a similar problem, I think. When people imagine Nokia they imagine a
1990s era dumb phone, or at best a crippled feature phone. It doesn't matter
what else Nokia does, they are defined that way in the consumer mind.

When people think of Android they think of Google, super smart things like
mapping, searching, voice recognition, translation, calendaring, etc. They
feel like they are on the edge, living in the future.

And when they think of the iPhone they think of the slick, super smooth
experience, the games and multimedia features, apps.

It doesn't really matter what any of these companies do, they'll continue to
be defined this way and only Android & iPhone have a truly positive image in
this new world. WP7 is hard to define and I'm divided on whether Nokia is good
or bad because when Nokia becomes an influence on the brand it may well act
like a boat anchor rather than the winch MS obviously wants it to be.

------
dr_
RIMM is one of the few companies that can actual compete based on it's
hardware specs, as opposed to it's software. People who use blackberry's love
their keyboards. They also love their email functionality. They should have
switched over to Android based devices running on their hardware with their
email client, with BBM thrown in. It could have been a killer device with a
ton of apps available from the get go.

This really could have, and should have, been done a while ago, but it's seems
like Mike Lazardis is on some kind of a ego trip.

~~~
jessedhillon
Could you elaborate on this some more, particularly the email client?

I had a Blackberry 8830 a few years ago and, even at that time, I thought it
was a barebones POS. The email client was pretty unremarkable, as I recall.

~~~
dr_
It's unremarkable to me as well, but people who I know who have switched over
from a Blackberry to a iPhone are typically happy with their decision, but the
only thing they claim the Blackberry was better with is email. Maybe this is
primarily for corporate environments, where they use the enterprise server.

------
gamble
I'm not really a fan of RIM, but the Playbook gave me a very good impression
when I first played with it at Best Buy. It isn't an iPad, but it was far more
pleasant to use than any of the Android tablets currently on the market.

The decision to ship it without email or calendaring, though... I don't know
what they were thinking.

------
hluska
Phrases like this make me feel a little bit queasy:

Cost Optimization Program: The company also announced that it will begin a
program to streamline operations across the organization, which will include a
headcount reduction. This realignment will be focused on taking out
redundancies and a reallocation of resources to allow us to focus on the areas
that offer the highest growth opportunities and align with RIM strategic
objectives, such as accelerating new product introductions.

(Source - Research in Motion's first quarter results for fiscal 2012 - page 2
- retrieved from <http://press.rim.com/financial/release.jsp?id=5051>)

I wish that companies would ditch the PR speech when they announce layoffs.

~~~
jsmcgd
Sometimes PR speech is directly symptomatic of executives' thinking. They talk
like this because they think like this - i.e. vague, non-committal, detached
abstract concepts that sound professional but are ultimately flat, uninspired
and purely reactionary.

I'm only saying this because I'm still bitter from my last employment where
this kind of business talk was routinely used to fill the void where
management's vision was supposed to be. It really begins to grate.

------
diogenescynic
This article predicted this a while back:
[http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2010/10/whats-
really-w...](http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2010/10/whats-really-wrong-
with-blackberry-and.html)

"RIM's real problems center around two big issues: its market is saturating,
and it seems to have lost the ability to create great products. This is a
classic problem that eventually faces most successful computer platforms. The
danger is not that RIM is about to collapse, but that it'll drift into in a
situation where it can't afford the investments needed to succeed in the
future. It's very easy for a company to accidentally cross that line, and very
hard to get back across it."

~~~
potatolicious
> _"and it seems to have lost the ability to create great products"_

I disagree with this part. RIM's products are just as good/bad as they've
always been - the problem is that Apple came in and raised the bar across the
board, and Google came in and did it some more.

RIM is creating early-2000s product in a landscape that has been completely
reshaped by iOS and Android.

~~~
tensor
This has been true, but recently RIM has moved towards a system more similar
to iOS and Android than their previous products. The Playbook is the first
product in this new technology stack.

I imagine that they are basing their future growth around other products based
on this new stack. They are behind, but they may still catch up enough to do
well. After all, if Apple has proven anything it's that execution matters a
whole lot. More so even than features.

Android is a good competitor to iOS only because they have both the features
and execution down well enough. Apple may still have an edge in polish, but
it's diminishing.

------
slashclee
This article from Gruber in 2008 seems eerily prescient now.
<http://daringfireball.net/2008/05/blackberry_vs_iphone>

------
saturdaysaint
The next time something like the iPhone launch happens, I'm going to listen to
the voice in the back of my head telling me to short the competition over the
next three years...

~~~
nkassis
Good luck spotting the next iPhone. It wasn't exactly a given that the iPhone
was going to be a success. And if you remove the recession, MSFT hasn't really
moved it's just stagnent. Same for RIM from what I can see EDIT: I was wrong
on rim they went to 100 bucks in 2008 but quickly dropped back to 40-50 range
where they are now. I was looking at 2007 where they were in the same range.

~~~
CamperBob
I think it was pretty obvious that the iPhone was going to be a huge success.
It's one reason why Microsoft's board is negligent in keeping Ballmer as CEO.
If it was obvious to me that the entire cell phone industry (or at least the
only profitable part of it) was being turned on its head, it should've been
even more obvious to Ballmer, Lazaridis, and other key industry executives.

The iPad, though, was a different story. I knew I wanted a giant iPod Touch as
soon as the iPhone came out, but when the iPad was finally announced I wasn't
sure if they were going to sell 2,000 of them or 20,000,000. To this day I
think my uncertainty was defensible, because unlike phones there was no
existing mass market.

~~~
sbierwagen

      I think it was pretty obvious that the iPhone was going to 
      be a huge success. 
    

There's more 20/20 hindsight in this thread than a rear-view mirror
convention. Could you please furnish the public statement you made four years
ago where you asserted the doom of all the market leaders, or failing that,
brokerage documents showing your massive investment in Apple Inc in 2007?

~~~
CamperBob
I didn't assert anyone's doom. At the time I assumed that everybody interested
in the smartphone business, not just Apple, was heading in the same obvious
direction.

Jobs' boast about being three years ahead of everyone else sounded like empty
hype, and Ballmer's public assertion that the iPhone would never gain
significant market share sounded like strategic misdirection.

I'm not going to post any trade confirmations, but I did buy some AAPL in
response to the iPhone announcement, thinking it was a good way for the
company to leverage its existing strengths in UX design. Should've bought
more, but hey, it was AAPL, and the conventional wisdom at the time went
something like, "What kind of moron would put a lot of money into AAPL?"

I don't lay claim to any magical insight, and that's the whole point of my
post.

------
mirkules
I realize it's probably early, but can anyone find any layoff numbers? (even
vague numbers, on a scale between "a few" and "a boatload" will be accepted)

~~~
imjustatechguy
I'd expect that the layoffs would be centered around the old OS. Anyone
involved in the new OS is likely to be safe. Or at least that sounds like a
logical approach.

I'd expect the layoffs to be around 5% maybe at most 10%, but really things
can still turn around for RIM if they can get their new OS out in mass, so I
think we are still not quite in a complete panic.

------
doublerebel
Blackberry had the smartphone lead in the UK for 2010 [1], and is still
growing. [2]

Blackberry has a 42% share of the smartphone market in Canada. [3] They also
dominate other markets like Argentina. [4]

I wouldn't count them out just yet. I don't see the Playbook getting much of a
response from users who don't already use BBs, but their handsets will have a
long life. They will have to move fast to keep up with Android, but I think
this announcement is a good example that they are aware.

[1]
[http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/201105/6765/BlackBe...](http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/201105/6765/BlackBerry-
claims-lead-in-UK-smartphone-market)

[2]
[http://m.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/mobilemarketing/i/artic...](http://m.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/mobilemarketing/i/article/android-
doubles-uk-market-share)

[3]
[http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2011/6/c...](http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2011/6/comScore_Launches_Mobile_Measurement_in_Canada)

[4] [http://www.nextwirelesslatam.com/index.php/1-3g/symbian-
and-...](http://www.nextwirelesslatam.com/index.php/1-3g/symbian-and-
blackberry-lead-the-smartphones-market-in-argentina/)

~~~
digamber_kamat
Not to mention their growth in India. Where 50 million subscribers get added
every month. BB is growing very fast here and iPhone is not affordable to most
of the indians.

------
daimyoyo
The sad fact is that RIM just can't seem to decide where it's going as a
company. They have an entire host of phones that are totally obsolete[1],
their tablet doesn't run an operating system that was built in house[2] and
for some reason they decided to force people to have a blackberry phone to get
the very features most people would use the tablet for.[3] So if I'm in the
market for a phone, why on earth would I go with a blackberry?(And no, BBM is
not enough)

[1][http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/02/rim-announces-
blackberry-...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/02/rim-announces-blackberry-
os-7/)

[2][http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/27/rim-introduces-
playbook-t...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/27/rim-introduces-playbook-the-
blackberry-tablet/)

[3][http://www.intomobile.com/2011/01/10/blackberry-playbook-
tab...](http://www.intomobile.com/2011/01/10/blackberry-playbook-tablet-
bridge/)

~~~
troutwine
I'm with you most of the way, but in what manner is QNX a liability?

~~~
daimyoyo
Rather than build the OS themselves, they decided to acquire it. That tells me
that RIM is suffering from a lack of creativity and while you can buy your way
to innovation(Microsoft has been doing it for more than 20 years) it's always
better to develop new technology in house. The fact that RIM didn't for a
flagship product is a huge red flag.

~~~
hollerith
When it became clear to Apple that they would need a new OS, they bought NeXT
in 1996, and the OS they got that way seems to have worked well for them -- on
computers and on phones. Also, Google got its mobile OS by buying Android,
Inc, in 2005.

------
saturdaysaint
The potential deathblow for a lot of these struggling platforms is that Apple
is coasting on a longer (15 month?) product cycle this year. RIM, Nokia (and
Windows Phone generally)and HP's webOS platform are counting on big fall
launches, but a big simultaneous iPhone launch might relegate the rest to
noise. If the rumored new Nexus phone launches around the same time, it's not
hard to imagine a 2 way platform race.

------
keithnoizu
Ahh I knew I never replied to those linkedin hr emails for a reason.

------
grandalf
+1 for Schumpeterian destruction!

