
RIM reports Q4 miss; Balsillie resigns as director, CTO out - CitiiDB
http://www.bgr.com/2012/03/29/rim-reports-q4-miss-balsillie-resigns-as-director-cto-out/
======
brisance
RIMM made some major mistakes but was too arrogant as the market leader to
take the competition seriously.

1) They Osborne'd their product line by prematurely showing off new products
that weren't ready.

2) They tried to meet the iPad head-on in the consumer market by calling their
device a Playbook but their strength is in enterprise. Thus the marketing
message came out confused and having a pompous "Amateur hour is over" campaign
sealed their own fate.

3) Repeated, worldwide BBM network failures that went on for extended periods
of time, alienating its most loyal customers when RIMM needed them the most.
This was their core competency and they neglected it. Having alternatives on
competing phones like iMessage, WhatsApp etc didn't help.

~~~
redwood
Talking about terrible marketing: they're running an aggressive television
campaign in India right now showing a bunch of singing business men in suits
chiming "We are the blackberry boys...."
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LducWACdt88>

This is one of the most obnoxious, male-centric ads I've ever seen and would
never float in the west. Sure it's India... but it's sad that a western
company thinks it's cool to run something that doesn't fly back home in S.
Asia.

~~~
peterhunt
Oh please. I often see female centric ads on western tv and I dont get
offended.

------
r00fus
Witness failure: many people even 2 years ago said the co-CEO's need to either
clean up shop or walk out... now that RIM's market is entirely ceded to
Android/iOS... NOW they start shaking things up?

Chances are, RIM will never be great again - they lost their edge, then sat on
their hands for years living off yesterday's big hits. Question is, do they
have anything that a acquiring company might find worth purchasing?

~~~
vladimirm
"The company also said that it will dial back efforts in multiple consumer
markets and refocus its efforts on the enterprise market." -- I think this a
smart move because they make business-oriented devices, not entertainment
devices, but it might be too late.

~~~
Silhouette
I don't think it's ever too late in a tech market as long as your company
still has enough funds to launch and market one more product. After all, if
you'd looked at pre-iEverything Apple a few years ago and claimed they would
be the most valuable company in the world today, most people would have
laughed.

That said, RIM clearly has an uphill struggle ahead of it. They need a smash
hit, which means they need people with vision at the top. They have limited
funds for repeated attempts, so unlike the Microsofts and Googles of this
world they can't afford to keep throwing stuff at the wall until they find
something that sticks. They've had a string of PR and management disasters in
recent years, which matters far more to a business-based market than to
consumers. And with the likes of Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon all now
heavily invested in mobile technology and competing for most of the biggest
market segments, it's going to be tough to find a niche that is small enough
to make a defensible foothold and yet big enough to expand out into a serious
player again.

My guess is that they need a new kind of device, some novel form factor or
combination of features that creates or brings credibility to a whole new
market the way Apple has done more than once. There _are_ pain points with a
lot of the current generation mobile devices, and in particular those devices
that rely mostly or entirely on a touchscreen are always going to be primarily
consumption devices, which means mobile content creation is an area with
potential. RIM actually has a very good track record of, for example,
combining real keys (albeit mini ones) with great displays (before the turkey
that was the Torch, the half-height displays at the top of high-end Blackberry
phones were pushing the resolution frontier long before Retina came along).

Another possibility, and one that is not mutually exclusive with the above, is
that RIM could aim for a clean, professional, businesslike UI. Not everyone
wants Facebook integration and iFart apps. Personally I don't even want those
on my personal phone, and I certainly have no interest in having them in my
business devices. On the other hand, I would love to have some mobile gear
that started with basically nothing preinstalled except for an OS and comms
tools, that had tools available to interoperate with whatever grown-up systems
I want to in an easy and secure way, and that had an "app store" with
professional software that did useful things. If the same organisation
supplying that mobile gear also happens to provide useful back office products
and native and/or web-based interfaces that let me talk to them from my
desktop/laptop/other large-scale devices, so much the better. Again, RIM
probably have more talent in-house in this sort of area than a lot of
companies, if they can figure out how to harness it.

Oh, and if RIMM shares are at $500 in five years because they've cornered the
"in-house cloud" market, someone please let me know so I can tell them where
to send the cheque. ;-)

~~~
rkwz
_> I don't think it's ever too late in a tech market as long as your company
still has enough funds to launch and market one more product._

This is something we see over and over again in this industry. Yet, people
still don't believe it.

------
speg
I was a coop student working at RIM in 2007 when the iPhone came out. Their
complacency and ignorance ensured I found work elsewhere post-graduation.

------
martinshen
RIM's greatest issue has been LEGACY.

RIM's focus on the enterprise ensures that a large number of their staff has
to build hacks to ensure their software's backwards compatibility. Forget the
entire "Flash as being dated" debacle and think more to the tune of
Microsoft's Exchange servers and address databases from the 80s which RIM has
to be compatible with.

Naturally, companies must decide whether they want to ditch this side of the
business. RIM tried to dip its toes in both. To be fair, they were trapped
into supporting legacy services. Legacy isn't something that can spinned off.
For RIM, they would have had to cut out a huge portion of their business to
try to innovate.

By comparison, Newer players in the mobile phone space (Apple, Google etc.)
didn't/don't have to deal with legacy. That's why they have such a small
presence in older large enterprise. Microsoft's mobile side had similar issues
to deal with but I think that their newer platform has eliminated their legacy
components so there is hope.

As a Canadian, I'm very sad to see RIM die off. U Waterloo will also suffer
tremendously. With SRED going away, I wonder what the Canadian tech scene will
look like overall. I think I'll consolidate my thoughts on this and write a
blog post or something.

~~~
rikthevik
This may not be a great place to make this request, but can someone write up a
detailed blog post on how the new SR&ED changes are going to affect us? I
would love some more perspective on this issue.

------
pcestrada
RIM will become another case study MBA students read about when discussing the
Innovator's Dilemma.

------
fpgeek
It looks like the new RIM CEO has opened his first envelope.

------
amartya916
For RIM to come back, just having a new OS (BB 10) and shiny hardware is not
going to be enough.

As an aside, Nokia, a company with similar brand recognition - albeit in a
different market segment - is trying to claw back into the game is using
Windows Phone 7 and Lumia 800, 900 series of phones. If I see this correctly,
Nokia isn't betting on just the new hardware and Microsoft's OS (and financial
muscle); they are also implicitly optimistic about Windows Marketplace and
other content (XBox?) gradually becoming seamlessly available across it's
product range. Content and services are the key; a decent piece of hardware
and a decent OS should be agiven.

The reason I brought up this is that for RIM to make a comeback, they need to
be able to offer something more than Apple is offering at the moment; that's
the only way to entice users away from a platform they've invested in. In my
opinion, the only company that can provide RIM with an edge in content and
services is Amazon.

I wonder if RIM and Amazon can cut some sort of a deal. Amazon already makes a
tablet that is fairly successful; the prospect of mobile phones with the Silk
browser running on them, seems quite interesting.

~~~
jm4
Have you used the Silk browser? It performs like a pig. Turning off "Silk" is
the only way to use it. Even then, it is substandard, in my opinion. If I have
my Kindle Fire in my hands and need to look something up online I will usually
put it down and reach for my iPhone on the nightstand. It is better than
nothing on a device I use primarily for reading books, but I would steer clear
of any phone running it.

~~~
amartya916
I should have clarified; yes indeed, Silk does perform like a pig _currently_
, but I like the idea behind it, and I believe that Amazon has the engineering
chops to pull it off.

Immediate access to the mobile phone market along with a huge amount of data
that can go Amazon's way if they fix Silk, might make a partnership seem
mutually beneficial. (Also, since the mobile phone market is still carrier
dependent, Amazon will have a harder time penetrating that market segment on
its own)

~~~
killedbydeath
Silk has the same ideas behind it which Opera has been pushing with Opera
Mini/Mobile and Opera Turbo for years. There is no reason why Amazon cannot
enjoy the same kind of tremendous marketshare as Opera does.

------
cshenoy
Serious question: What viable options do they have besides being acquired?

~~~
rogerbinns
The time for small course corrections has long since passed.

The main option for them is to become smaller, and to do one thing well. Their
perceived strengths are mobile messaging (BBM) and "security". If they became
a software only company then they would be at the mercy of their (fickle)
partners to get it deployed. When they are playing the hardware game then
there is ferocious competition and you have to do a full software stack
(proprietary or adapting Android/WinMo).

In their position I would do exactly one hardware device that is a best of
breed, adapt Android for it and have a layer of BBM/security on top. I'd try
to get the BBM/security licensed by as many manufacturers as possible and use
the own hardware as a showcase. Eventually the hope would be to get out of the
hardware business - it exists purely to ensure there is at least one way to
market.

There is so much to be done on the communication side with lots of half assed
solutions. On the security side consider running an IT department or being a
consumer and a device is stolen. Now list what sensitive information was on
the device.

~~~
zmmmmm
This. Android is posing a serious problem for businesses as people demand to
BYO with phones that are a huge melting pot of unknown versions,
vulnerabilities, levels of support for exchange, etc. They need to provide
their stack as a virtualized system that can work on any Android handset and
then have their own analogue of Google "experience" devices where they do the
whole thing. They can make some serious hay out of guaranteeing updates,
security and support which the Android vendors largely are either ignoring or
failing at.

------
MLMcMillion
Hey guys, remember: They make tools, not toys.

Too bad everyone else is busy buying phones that can do both.

~~~
felipemnoa
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you
win."

I find it incredible that RIM or their customers did do all of these things.
In fact, a lot of the major phone companies did this, even Nokia and
Microsoft.

~~~
arkitaip
This is the most important topic in this discussion and maybe the most topic
for any startup or company in general. How do prevent your business from
becoming obsolete? Is that even possible in the long run for IT firms? How
about staying hungry or at least not becoming arrogant like RIM?

~~~
jfb
It doesn't matter. Everything dies.

You get hugely successful, defining a new product. You build a very effective
business to capitalize on your product. The state you were operating in when
you designed/built your product is _by necessity_ baked into your business.
Life, for a time, becomes Very Good.

But the world state changes. This is inevitable. You don't care — there's
enough money in what you do so that changing your business just isn't
_rational_. So you keep on keeping on, and your culture continues to grow in
the direction allowed — fighting to keep the status quo, even as the rest of
the world is moving on.

And then at some point, once the world state you built into your company (that
has been profitable for you since day one) and the current world state diverge
to the point that you can't even _understand_ the change required, and you are
going to be staring down obsolescence. There's nothing you can do. Your entire
company is predicated on fitting a context that no longer exists. You can't
understand what's happened, because to understand what has happened your
company would have to be a very different company.

And you die.

~~~
jodrellblank
> It doesn't matter. Everything dies.

"Why do all companies die, wheras almost all cities survive? You can drop an
atom bomb on a city and it will survive".

[http://www.ted.com/talks/geoffrey_west_the_surprising_math_o...](http://www.ted.com/talks/geoffrey_west_the_surprising_math_of_cities_and_corporations.html)

~~~
kooshball
Excellent TED talk. Thanks for the link.

------
paparoger
Im am not sorry about the loss to BB. They totally dropped the ball on the
whole company and there brand!

------
orbitingpluto
In an attempt to alleviate the craptuclar collection of software, RIM gave out
free Playbooks to Android Developers.

Having now played with one I don't think it's that bad of a device, and I
certainly trust it more than an iPad or Android tablet.

However RIM is missing key software that they should have provided.

1) The PDF reader works, but it's functionality is as bad as the Adobe Reader
on Android.

2) The browser experience has thus far been not so bad. Things work for me on
the Playbook that crash on Android browsers. A desktop mode for the browser
(like Dolphins, but without the crashing) is necessary.

3) A remote desktop client?

4) A VNC client?

5) Busybox!

6) Putty!

7) Python and/or Ruby

~~~
GeoffWozniak
Saying the PDF reader on Playbook works is like saying a bucket of cold water
works for having a shower.

I actually enjoy reading on a Playbook more than an iPad or a Kindle. But the
PDF reader is abysmal software.

------
sandGorgon
Their crown jewels are its BBM framework. They should simply make a paid BBM
app for iphone, android,winmo,etc. I think they will find a substantial
userbase of people who would love to pay a monthly subscription to be able
to.use BBM on a non-blackberry device.

------
3am
I wonder if they'll spin out QNX.

------
josteink
_RIM said it shipped 11.1 million BlackBerry smartphones and more than 500,000
PlayBook tablets last quarter._

I absolutely refuse to believe those numbers. I've seen noone with a
Blackberry tablet and I'm surrounded by geeks at home and at work.

Spotting Android-tablets is hard enough (I have one and besides that I know
one other guy IRL which does as well), but Playbooks are practically non-
existent.

~~~
_mayo
Shipped does not always equal sold. They could be devices sitting on a palette
in the back of some warehouse.

------
bane
Imagine a device with Android as the OS and RIMs amazing, bullet proof,
indestructible, long life batteried hardware.

------
Radzell
Well blackbberry you were a tech company who refuse to innovate really I only
see on of two possibilities become a android OEM or fail and get Google,
Apple, or some other company to buy your name and patents. It's sad because
they had plenty of time, but scoffed at ever lose the smartphone wars with
such a significant lead.

~~~
udp
I don't see how becoming an Android OEM can't be a win-win situation.
Blackberry keep their brand and don't have an OS to maintain (maybe just a
handful of Blackberry Android applications instead).

~~~
fpgeek
I'm sure embracing Android would be a win for RIM, but would it be too little,
too late?

