

RIM rumored to lay off 2,000 more workers soon - xtiy
http://www.neowin.net/news/rim-rumored-to-lay-off-2000-more-workers-soon

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HorizonXP
Disclaimer: I used to work for RIM as a co-op student 8 years ago. I am not a
current employee, but I have been an avid BlackBerry user and developer.

IMHO, these layoffs are long overdue. RIM has been growing for years under the
BlackBerry OS and failed to adapt to a changing marketplace. The iPhone really
blew them out of the water, and the BlackBerry Storm was a terrible attempt to
try to answer that threat. The BlackBerry Java OS is old, dated, and does not
have the infrastructure needed to compete in the marketplace of 5 years ago,
let alone today.

That's all changing with the adoption of the QNX operating system on the
BlackBerry PlayBook and BlackBerry 10. People may lament the mismanagement of
the launch of the PlayBook, and I would mostly tend to agree. However, RIM has
delivered a solid base from which to build upon, and they're doing all of the
right things. To this day, we're still figuring out all of the nuances of the
OS and what can be done with it. Quite simply, QNX is fast, secure, and well-
engineered. IMHO, it is leaps and bounds ahead of what iOS or even Android are
capable of.

These changes are also being reflected at RIM itself. Their acquisition of QNX
several years back was a masterful move. And even though RIM bought QNX, the
culture seems to becoming more QNX-like, which is a great thing. (It's almost
like a reverse-takeover.) They're adopting many of the lean startup methods in
driving their products forward. One can point to the delivery of Dev Alpha
prototypes to developers back in early May. Put out a minimum viable product
to your early adopters to gather feedback and figure out what to build next.
As developers, we have the opportunity to have a platform built to our needs,
rather than the other way around. It smacks of lean startup methodologies.

My rambling does have a point: these layoffs are likely in the old and slow
departments of RIM's past, related to the older BBOS. BBOS is going into
maintenance mode, as it seems like they are no longer developing new features
for it and are reserving it for their budget devices. While layoffs always
suck because people are losing their livelihood, I think it's a great move on
RIM's part to become leaner and more agile. They have the capability to
deliver something truly wonderful with BlackBerry 10. The building blocks are
all there. I'm personally hopeful they will execute it well, because that's
ultimately what will determine their fate, whether they end up like Palm or
like Apple. Only time will tell.

~~~
oz
Thanks for your insightful comment. I'm glad to hear this, as I am a BB fan as
well. I haven't often used the other platforms, but what I've read in online
reviews, the BB is _still_ the king of email. I literally get email faster on
my blackberry than in Thunderbird or the Google Apps web interface. Battery
life is also stellar.

I'm looking forward to BB10, and plan to buy one when they are released in
October. I hope they make the ship date.

Regarding the Playbook botch, I read recently that the reason why the Playbook
had to be tethered to a phone to get email and BBM was because the RIM
infrastructure only supported mapping an email account to one PIN. Have they
corrected this? I understand if you're not able to comment for legal reasons.

Can you tell us more about the advantages of QNX over iOS and Android? Have
you tried the Cascade SDK? Did you get your hands on the Dev Alpha?

Oh my god. I just realized what it feels like to be a fanboi. Oh well, RIM
needs love too!

~~~
freshnote
I hear people say the BB is faster at email, but by how much? A few seconds?
Even if the difference is a few minutes, it doesn't compensate for BBs many
other shortcomings.

Is there something I'm missing?

FYI, I'm a long time iPhone user.

~~~
rcfox
If you're in a important conversation and have a few minutes delay between
each response, you're wasting a lot of time.

Switching to an instant messenger isn't always an option if you're in a
corporate environment. You don't want your conversations sitting on a third
party server.

~~~
HorizonXP
This is precisely what makes BlackBerry and BES so appealing for enterprises.
Also, I think e-mails are actually faster on BES than on BIS.

Little known fact: did you know that BES allows you to access your company's
entire address book on your BlackBerry? When I was a co-op, it meant I could
e-mail anyone in the company just by looking up their name. Sure, LDAP allows
you the same capability, but on most platforms, that means you need to expose
it publicly. You could secure by forcing use over a VPN, I suppose, but that's
extra overhead as well, which is somewhat precious on a mobile device. It's
less relevant nowadays, but it's a really cool feature that RIM has had for
nearly a decade now that few consumers even know about.

I would argue that most BlackBerry users do not have they devices setup to
take advantage of all of their capabilities. And to be honest, that is a huge
failure of RIM's marketing and publicity teams.

------
DigitalSea
It was bound to happen sooner or later. RIM have really been struggling to
adapt to the changing corporate/business sector. Phones like the iPhone have
been biting slowly but surely into the corporate/business sector. I know in
many areas like government Blackberry's are still the number #1 choice but for
how long?

They've lost direction, it'll be interesting to see if they're still around in
a few years time or someone else scoops them up and tries to turn the company
around.

~~~
HorizonXP
I think it's a bit early to write them off. Let's see what happens in 6 months
time after the launch of BlackBerry 10. Then you may be proven right, but I
don't think that's today.

------
heathkit
Maybe I'm biased, but to me the story of RIM is another example of the triumph
of open source over closed-source solutions. iOS is based on BSD, Android on
linux (and heavily leverages the OpenBinder IPC mechanism. I've looked closely
at the old blackberry OS and the new QNX based one, and it's amazing how far
behind they are.

Seeing the new QNX OS and how they're using it was a real eye opener. They
have nothing that even comes close to the features of ICS on their roadmap,
and they just don't have the resources or expertise to ever catch up.

I agree, they do make good hardware. But the software side of their house is
in the stone age, and the recent acquisitions haven't really helped at all.

~~~
jan_g
Very funny that your view is exactly the opposite of HorizonXP's view in his
posts, where he asserts that QNX is much more advanced that either iOS or
Android.

~~~
HorizonXP
Yeah, +1 on this. I wish I could provide better evidence to support my claims
about QNX being better, but I really would butcher it. Maybe tomorrow, when
I'm less sleep-deprived, I can take a stab at it. Right now, I'm responding
with items that I know I can speak about, since they're off the top of my
head.

I would actually argue that QNX and RIM's current efforts are more open than
before. Prior to RIM's acquisition of QNX, it was open-source, called OpenQNX.
They closed it shortly after acquiring it (which doesn't help support my
claims :-P), but they've really been pushing open-source efforts.

Cascades is built on Qt, and they've been committing heavily to the gitorious
repo. Moreover, they've contracted KDAB to continue those efforts.

If you look at this page
[https://developer.blackberry.com/native/documentation/oss.ht...](https://developer.blackberry.com/native/documentation/oss.html),
you'll see a list of all the open-source components that they've ported to the
platform. Everything is hosted on github at <http://blackberry.github.com/>.

Look, I know I'm sounding like a BlackBerry fanboy, and it's because I am. I
drank the Kool-Aid, and I like it. I want them to succeed. They may not be the
company we deserve, but the company we need. We need a 3rd player to usurp
Apple's draconian App Store policies, and provide some semblance of quality
over Google Play Store.

Again, I think RIM is making the right moves. If you're a developer, you owe
it to yourself to check out the resources that they're offering. Follow them
on twitter, @BlackBerryDev. Heck, check out one of the BlackBerry Jam World
Tours that might be in a town near you
(<http://www.blackberryjamworldtour.com/>).

Research them yourself and draw your own conclusions. You may still disagree
with me. That's ok. At least, you'll be well-informed and STILL disagreeeing
with me. :-)

------
sparknlaunch12
HP announced 27k last week. Ericsson proposing 1.7k. Unsurprising those no
longer at the top have to reduce their workforce. RIM has dropped the ball
recently (two significant public blunders) and their tablet offering is
terrible. Firms are considering using iPhone's instead of the popular
Blackberry. Times are changing.

------
mindblink
It's always sad to hear such a formerly great company take such a hit. Wonder
at what point is RIM an attractive take-over target for the likes of software
giants in search of controlling their mobile destiny, like Facebook.

~~~
j2labs
Or private equity.

~~~
HorizonXP
To be honest, I don't think a firm is interested in buying RIM until after
BB10 launches. And they're hoping it's a failure so they can buy RIM for cheap
and liquidate the assets. That's what I would do.

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rpeden
Could actually be as many as 6,000:
[http://business.financialpost.com/2012/05/27/rim-layoffs-
cou...](http://business.financialpost.com/2012/05/27/rim-layoffs-could-hit-
thousands/)

~~~
HorizonXP
That number seems high to me, but not impossible. This news isn't exactly new
though, it's just hitting the presses now. Many of my friends outside of RIM
have been hearing this for quite some time.

------
mukaiji
a sad day for canadian innovation :(

~~~
HorizonXP
I actually think the opposite, it's a great day. Get rid of some of the cruft
and excess baggage of your previous laurels, so you can focus on the next
innovation.

