

Anonymous RIM Employee Blasts Company in Open Letter (2011) - WestCoastJustin
http://allthingsd.com/20110630/rim-gets-its-peanut-butter-manifesto-as-employee-rails-about-internal-woes/

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WestCoastJustin
_> 4) Developers, not Carriers can now make or break us_ [1]

Hindsight is 20/20, but this anonymous letter to RIM Senior Management Team,
really nailed this point. The developer ecosystem, and the app for everything
mind set, that Apple pretty much invented, and later emulated via Google with
Android, is simply stunning.

Personally, I think RIM should turn itself into mainly a hardware vendor, cut
its losses, agree that Apple and Google own the market, and join them. Ditch
BlackBerry OS, install Android (with their custom BES encryption used in the
enterprise [2]), and tap into the massive market of developers, just waiting
there. Why on earth are they putting this effort into a losing battle?! I
think there is a poker term for this ( _chase_ [3]), when you are in a bad
hand, but you still have all this money invested, so you keep bleeding, hoping
the situation will improve, till you get killed.

[1] [http://bgr.com/2011/06/30/open-letter-to-blackberry-
bosses-s...](http://bgr.com/2011/06/30/open-letter-to-blackberry-bosses-
senior-rim-exec-tells-all-as-company-crumbles-around-him/)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry_Enterprise_Server](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry_Enterprise_Server)

[3] [http://pokerterms.com/chasing.html](http://pokerterms.com/chasing.html)

~~~
wslh
I am sad because of QNX, not BB. I don't know what's the future of QNX if BB
decides to follow the Android or Windows 8 route.

~~~
pedalpete
I'm assuming somebody else will pick up QNX, or it will be split off into it's
own company. I don't think most people realise the value of QNX, maybe not as
a phone OS, but in running so many other devices.

Interestingly, RIM doesn't say how much revenue QNX makes for the company.
[http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/04/05/the-little-known-
comp...](http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/04/05/the-little-known-company-that-
controls-your-car/)

~~~
ams6110
I'm guessing that QNX will soon face a run for its money as iOS and/or Android
start seeing use in devices besides phones and tablets. A common UI experience
from phone to tablet to automobile controls/navigation would be something
consumers would appreciate.

~~~
rcfox
I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that iOS and Android will never be
running nuclear reactors.

------
programminggeek
One of the funniest/saddest parts of how RIM treated developers was that
initially there was something like a $250 fee to get into their developer
program, and then you only got something like 5 app submissions/updates. You
then had to pay for more submissions/updates. I believe they suspended this
policy around the time they launched the BB Playbook, but compared to
distributing through Google Play or the Apple App store, it was surprisingly
ridiculous.

Also, Window's Store developer setup experience was pretty embarrassing as of
a year or so ago.

If you want your ecosystem to do well, nail the developer onboarding
experience, not just the getting started docs but the whole end to end
experience. As a multiplatform developer, it makes a huge difference to where
I want to develop for.

~~~
ams6110
From their historical position as an "enterprise" phone provider, the dev
program makes sense. It's like how being a Microsoft Windows developer used to
be. You had to pay for all the tools. They may have felt that by having a
price of entry it would help ensure that only "serious" developers would
bother to apply.

