

How RIM Can Survive... - Tawheed
http://tawheed.tumblr.com/post/7240104343/how-rim-can-survive

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icarus_drowning
I am continually confused when people write things like _"Blackberry...has the
shittiest web browser, terrible apps, but an absolutely fantastic email
experience (still)."_ I used to work on corporate IT managing and using RIM
products from end to end, and I never found the email experience all that
compelling. Sure the devices have fairly good keyboards, and, as a proponent
of hardware keyboards in an era when they are all being relegated to software,
I'm somewhat sympathetic to the RIM cause.

But the "email experience" on the Blackberry's I've used-- from older,
clunkier models with the torturous side-scrollwheel to the Storm2-- was only
ever as good as the Blackberry OS itself, which has consistently been pretty
terrible. Who cares if it's easy to select an email if you have to endure an
excruciating boot process before you can get to it? Who cares if the device
has a fantastic keyboard if you have to wade through awful UI in order to
launch the email app? (This is not to mention the horrible experience of
_managing_ the server portions of BES, which I always found confusing and
often deliberately crippled).

I think this "myth" stems from the legacy of the Blackberry, which was one of
the first devices to really have _any_ kind of data/email capability. (Or, at
the very least, was one of the first to be easy to adopt and fairly
inexpensive to run with those kinds of capabilities). Of course the Blackberry
was considered amazing when it was the only way to connect a corporate email
system to a cell phone or other mobile device. But it isn't anymore, and
frankly, I've found the "experience" of using and managing Google Apps and an
Android phone _light years_ better. (Hell, I think the crappy IMAP client that
comes with Android is better than having to use a RIM OS, although I confess,
I got out of the game before the Playbook, and thus, QNX).

UPDATE: Grammer, and ending comment.

~~~
Tawheed
90% of your time is spent IN the email app. Not the boot process, nor the home
screen and certainly not the IT administrative process of setting up servers
(users do not care about that -- that is why highly paid IT people deal with
it at Enterprises).

~~~
icarus_drowning
As a frontline helpdesk worker at a corporation that deployed hundreds of
Blackberrys, I can assure you that the users frequently cared a great deal
about the crappy UI of the Blackberry OS. When I left, the MIS (yes, we were
_that_ old-school) department were beginning to research moving away from RIM
because their end-user devices were consuming too much of our helpdesk
resources. And because the executives, who all had iPhones, came to us and
asked the question why we couldn't provide them a solution that worked as well
as an iPhone's email.

------
pedalpete
I wouldn't put RIM into 'survival' mode just yet.

Sure they're are taking a beating right now. They were a powerhouse in the
early smart-phone wars, and they don't seem to know what they are doing, which
direction is up, and lack a clear vision.

But I believe they have a huge ace up their sleeve that is being somewhat
ignored. QNX. Not as the operating system for their devices, though obviously
that is important too, but as a popular embedded operating system 'in
everything from in-dash radios and infotainment systems to the latest casino
gaming terminals' (from the qnx.com website).

Blackberry has a history of making some pretty good hardware, and they have
systems embedded in enterprise (BIS) and consumer devices (QNX). Those who are
only seeing the currently mediocre products I think are selling RIM short.

I don't own a Blackberry but apparently I interact with RIM products everyday.

~~~
Tawheed
Let's get real though -- which would you rather have in your next car? A QNX
operated system or an iOS system?

~~~
tzs
It depends on where. Controlling the entertainment system? iOS.

Controlling air bag deployment? QNX.

------
jinushaun
Cliff notes: RIM should port or license its email system, app and BBM to iOS
and Android. They can "own" the mobile email market across all devices.

~~~
Tawheed
Yes, and to add to that -- even if they don't -- that market is still ripe for
taking and we're thinking hard about it at Tout.

------
hendzen
People have been making relatively similar arguments for awhile about how RIM
should just switch all their handsets over to Android, then rewrite BBOS as an
Android skin akin to HTC Sense for the enterprise.

~~~
goalieca
Instead they are taking QNX (a solid OS) but having to write tons of
compatibility layers, developer tools, and bribing devs to stay.

------
jackvalentine
I'm not trolling when I ask, because I have zero experience with it, but what
advantage does BES email have over a properly configured Exchange 2010 server?

~~~
Tawheed
Based on my understanding, most "properly configured" Exchange 2010 servers
are inside of the corporate firewall sealed off. BES/BIS (whatever the name
is) gives secured access to outside servers.

~~~
icarus_drowning
I think one of the salient features of Exchange 2010 is a Microsoft Sync
technology that mimics some of the features of BES. Last I'd heard (I'm not in
IT anymore, having instead chosen a career that actually matches my
education), it was woefully worse than BES. Which is saying something.

