

RIM Must Switch To Android Now, Before It's Too Late - keltex
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/08/20/businessinsider-rim-android-blackberry-2010-8.DTL

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yason
They way I've seen it for about at least a year now is that the mobile
computing world is becoming a commodity, just like the desktop computing
world, and in a commodity world there are only major platforms and not big
manufacturers.

Consider Windows and the PC hardware brands: generally there's not much
difference between Dell, Samsung, HP, Lenovo and the rest. For example, most
people are buying laptops these days. Sure, all the brands have little niches:
some are considered durable and professional, some focus on the cheap segment
and some focus on the pricey end, some make big gamers' laptops and some make
small travel laptops. But they're all brands and brands are all about what
people think and not much about reality. This means that my mother can choose
any laptop she want and even the cheapest one has many, many times more power
and features than she needs.

For the mobile world, the transition to a commodity took place when phones
became computers. Cellphones are a relatively new invention and new market,
and in the beginning it was enough to just reliably manufacture a working
phone. Not every company could do even that! The best hardware quite a lot
better than the worst hardware.

Then gradually the phone hardware become a commodity. The dysfunctional
designs got weeded out. Manufacturing got centralized to companies
specializing in specific chips or chipsets. These days a company without lots
of experience and history in the mobile world can buy a set of required
system-on-chips for gsm/3G/bluetooth/camera functionality and anything beyond,
and start making mobile phones. While things did work when each cellphone
maker had their own OS it was quite a limitation, and very analogous to the
80's home computer market.

In the 80's, you could buy different Commodore, Atari, Apple, PC, Acorn,
Sinclair, and probably a few dozen other niche home computers and none of them
worked together. Finally, in the late 80's the PC platform with all their
dozens of IBM PC clones won over everyone else, even most of Apple. Soon
everyone found themselves having landed on the same commodity hardware and
they figured that they'll make more money if they just use the same OS than
everyone else, rather than a custom OS that would just cut them off the big
market. Hence, Windows bloomed, everyone sold it, and soon it didn't matter
which computer you bought because you ended up using Windows on it.
Differences between PC makers become differences in brands.

The same is happening in mobile phones, err, I mean mobile computers. Because
everyone (relatively speaking) can do the hardware, companies can now afford
to, and must, focus on the software.

I hereby foresee that in a few years we're down to Android and iPhone and "the
rest". Unless Apple begins to target the low end, Android will become the
clearly largest mobile phone platform in the world. iPhone will compete in the
high end against Android but the relation between Android and iPhone OS are
likely to parallel the way Microsoft and Apple relate to each other in the
desktop market.

That is, unless unforeseen disruptions arise and completely throw the market
upside down, Android will grow to have 40-50% market share, Apple up to
20-30%, and the rest will be 5-15% Symbian, Windows Phone, and many others
combined.

~~~
nanairo
I am not convinced that Android will do so great in the long term: well yes,
great maybe not.

My guess would be more along the lines of (obviously I am no analyst and this
are really just guesses):

Android: 25% Apple: 25% WP7: 20% Meego/Symbian: 15% RIM: 15%

with Apple and Android aiming mostly at the consumer market, and, Windows and
RIM at the business market. Meego will be a generic blog that will work in
every field but will never excel. And Symbian will control the cheap, 3rd-
world country phones.

I do have hopes though that maybe Meego will end up being a surprise. (I wish,
I really liked Nokia back in the days).

------
nanairo
OMG, this is such an unbelievable wrong idea. The only one that it would help
is Android, and it would hurt Apple. But RIM would risk losing a lot too in
the long-run.

Look at what happened with the PC market. Compaq? Gateway? Even Dell and HP,
the biggest two are earning very little from their computer division (well,
relatively little). The two winners in the PC market have been Windows and
Intel.

So now we have RIM. They move to Android, and lose the exclusivity of their
OS. Is their hardware division so strong and their product so flawless that
they will be able to compete with Samsung, Motorola or HTC?

The way I see it Samsung has still a few aces from its very strong screen
division, and others (don't they also produce flash?). HTC also could win:
they started from almost 0, a cut-throad market can only do them good.

But the others? They all have access to the same processors, screens,
batteries, and OS. Even now (and we have just started) a new phone enjoys a
few months in the sunlight before being subclassed by a new model. In the long
term they will only be able to compete by adding more recent hardware (but
everyone can do that) and price.

Is this really were RIM wants to be in the future?

~~~
ergo98
>Look at what happened with the PC market. Compaq? Gateway? Even Dell and HP,
the biggest two are earning very little from their computer division (well,
relatively little). The two winners in the PC market have been Windows and
Intel.

Your analogy suffers from a strong survivorship bias.

If you were paying attention to the computer market in the 80s, there were
countless companies with their own take on computers. The overwhelming number
of them disappeared, while a very few (like Dell) managed to hang their
fortunes on the winning side (PC-ish, Windows) and saw the dollars pour in.

The more I think about your analogy, the more I realize that the example you
gave is an exact counterpoint to your given conclusion.

And really, you claim that Dell and HP make relatively little from their
computer divisions? They are both global companies, having profited to the
tune of many billions, on the backs of that effort.

RIM _cannot_ continue on their current arc. They will be _dead_ in a matter of
years. It is absolutely, positively guaranteed.

In any case, one thing about Android is that in no way do vendors lose
exclusivity...that's a part of the platform. I know tech people hate HTC
Sense, but you know a lot of end-users actually love it. The same for Moto
Blur and the other differentiations. We are not a good study in the utility of
such differentiators. RIM would have the full ability to completely customize
Android to be a very unique, very powerful experience.

~~~
nanairo
Sure. But your view is a bit pessimistic. I would like to think that the
management at RIM think they've got something unique that will give them an
edge. Maybe it's more risky but if you believe in your company that's a risk
you should take.

And RIM is not exactly a nobody: they've got a large chunk of the market. Your
point is basically: "Forget your past glory, give up your profit margins, and
join the Android crowd". Why not instead: "Improve your OS to be on par with
the competition (no need to be better), and use your good hardware and your
proprietary applications to make the difference".

I don't see how using Android is a long term viable strategy for a company
that currently has 17% of the market. It looks more like throwing the towel.

------
mattmaroon
He's forgetting that a lot of times, it isn't the end user purchasing the
Blackberry. RIM owns corporate sales, and that isn't slackening. Their overall
market share in smart phones is declining, but that's just an effect of so
many consumers beginning to buy them. At the end of the day it's all about
profit, not market share, and a smaller percentage of a much larger pie is
often a good thing.

The iPhone (and most Android units, which are keyboardless) don't even attempt
to cater to RIM's core market: hardcore emailers. RIM will continue to own
that for the foreseeable future. They're even getting some consumer traction
since text messaging is so ubiquitous.

Corporate IT departments, that already have BES running, are going to keep
buying Blackberries. And the Blackberries are going to keep them running BES.
There are certainly alternatives (Android/Active Sync) but the cost involved
in switching is significant and the benefits are merely nonexistent.

So all RIM would do in switching to Android is end their vendor lock-in.
Vendors don't often give that up.

While the Blackberry OS is rough around the edges, so is Android. And the
Berry still does email better than anyone.

~~~
ergo98
There seems to be a lot of debate based on emotion with remarkably little
fact.

Many corporations are moving to a bring-your-own smartphone policy. My
organization did exactly that recently, and no new Blackberry has been
purchased in some time: We have the BES server and the plans, but users don't
want to carry some deadweight blackberry _and_ the Android or iPhone
smartphone that they also carry. With Exchange Web Services, the whole BES
thing seems like such an anachronism anyways.

~~~
mattmaroon
Decrying an argument for lacking facts and then replying with an anecdote is
hypocritical.

~~~
rbanffy
He is right many companies are switching to a bring-your-own-smartphone
policies. We haven't issued a Blackberry in quite some time and stuff like
IMAP and OWA make it easy to make just about any cleverphone functional.

The issue is dominance. Once a new player enters the segment, it's a question
of time until it fragments. Blackberry enjoyed a dominant position for a long
time but being the #1 corporate-issue phone is not important in a world where
more and more people bring their own phones into their jobs.

------
jeffclark
Obviously the entire article is fluff, but there's one thing that sticks out
as just wrong:

"No one who buys BlackBerry products actually cares about the BlackBerry OS."

Has this guy ever talked to a Blackberry owner? They seem to be some of the
most loyal cell phone owners around. Everyone talks about switching to an
iPhone or whatever, but (from the article):

"RIM is still selling plenty of BlackBerry devices -- thanks to international
expansion and big sales at carriers."

~~~
dmix
I believe this article had the basis that the reality of the market is
changing. So while Blackberry may have some passionate users now, the gap in
quality of their software compared to android/ios is going to keep widening.

Basically they either need to get their software up to speed or move to
android.

------
azakus
This would actually be a terrible idea. Imagine all the rewriting of every
little business app people have written for their blackberries, and the
instant obsolescence of BES servers. No, RIM just needs to innovate in a way
that doesn't seem half-assed.

~~~
wmf
Presumably if RIM switched to Android, they would port all their apps (like
the much-beloved mail client) to Android and possibly even have a J2ME VM to
run old third-party Blackberry apps.

------
protomyth
This bears and eerie resemblance to all those "Apple needs to switch to
Windows NT" articles from a decade back.

~~~
mlinsey
Well, Apple's core OS was severely lacking, and they did need to make a major
switch to really start turning things around. Unfortunately, the analogous
thing to what Apple did would have been to acquire Palm and use its underlying
architecture for a new product that was still called RIM OS (and hope that the
CEO of Palm was some genius visionary that could run your company instead of
you, I guess?)

~~~
rbanffy
The difference is that NeXT acquired Apple (for a negative amount of money,
that is) and provided them with an OS they could control. Apple adopting an OS
Microsoft controlled was a Really Stupid Idea, much like Blackberry adopting
an OS Google controls is now. The only meaningful difference is that Google is
not a direct competitor while Microsoft was (in association with every PC
maker)

------
9oliYQjP
I disagree. I think Microsoft and RIM should team up. Microsoft is supplying
Windows 7 to vendors that just don't give a crap about what software is on
their phone as long as it's got all the checkbox features (i.e. they offer
both Android and Windows 7 devices but won't focus on one over the other). So
stop supplying Windows 7 to these vendors and make RIM the exclusive vendor
for Windows 7 devices. Microsoft has a pretty great mobile OS in Windows 7
(this coming from an iPhone lover) and RIM has great hardware and a fan base.
These two companies need each other.

~~~
barrkel
I wasn't aware Windows Phone 7 was released. I don't know about you, but I
can't really tell what a product is like until I've at least read independent
reviews, or preferably used it directly.

~~~
9oliYQjP
That's usually true unless the product is from Microsoft. Unlike Apple,
Microsoft is pretty up-front about what their product will be like before it's
actually released. Also, it's not like Microsoft will be starting from
scratch. They've got a good kernel and solid foundation to build from. They've
got great developer tools. Yes, the user experience is a HUGE blank that needs
to be filled in. But do I think Windows Phone 7 will suck like Windows Mobile?
I'm a betting man and I say it won't suck, it will actually be decent and
won't feel like Android's "I'm running KDE" crappy feel/user experience.

------
rahoulb
RIM owns QNX which has been working in embedded communication devices for
years.

Why would they need Android?

~~~
wmf
To run Android apps.

~~~
DougBTX
Why would they want a task manager app?

------
hendzen
I agree. BB OS is buggy and does not have even close to the level of developer
attention as iOS or Android. RIM should just make the jump now before it fades
into irrelevance. IMHO, the most useful features of BB OS could be reworked as
an Android skin, like HTC's Sense or Motorola's Motoblur.

~~~
grandalf
the apps are horrible, but the core BB operating system is very fast and
usable.

~~~
RodgerTheGreat
In my (admittedly brief) experience with Blackberry development, this is
anything but the case. Libraries are flaky, inconsistent and poorly
documented, and aspects of the RIM JVM implementation are deeply flawed. For
example, one of my coworkers recently discovered that static initialization
blocks can be called multiple times if a class or interface has inheritors,
blatantly violating the spec.

...Did you mean the UI or something?

------
joshu
I am very seriously considering switching from a Droid back to a blackberry.

~~~
nanairo
Would you care to explain more?

(Incidentally here in the UK Blackberries are doing very well, and not just in
the corporate environment. A lot of students and teenager have them too.)

~~~
tlack
That's the same in the states, but adoption has really fallen off after the
Bold and Curve2 - there hasn't been anything exciting and new in the works in
the past year or so, and the Torch is considered a failure so far stateside
(it's only been a few weeks). Most of my friends still have Blackberries but
as their handsets die they're being replaced with a lot of Androids and
iPhones..

~~~
nanairo
But how much of that is hype and how much is a fundamental problem with
Blackberries? To me the torch seems a pretty nice product. Sure: still a
generation behind. But it's not like opponents are too far ahead: they (and MS
and Meego) can still catch up. Look what Android did in one year!

I think if the Blackberry keep being solid mobiles that are a little bit
behind the curve but not much (say 6 to 12 months), they'll be just perfect
for corporations. There's a bright future ahead.

------
nanairo
Incidentally, I think it's too early to call the shots. One year ago Android
was another nobody, and now look where they are!

Palm had a money problem, but if they didn't maybe they could have got good
returns.

And on the horizon we have Meego and Windows Phone 7.

A year from now the situation may be very very different. Plus when your
product is mostly good but some aspects are crap, wouldn't the best policy be
to improve the latter instead of throwing everything and become a me-too
manufacturer?

------
tzs
RIM is buying QNX. Probably smarter to build a new kick-ass platform based on
QNX than switch to a platform that just got hit with a major lawsuit.

------
adolph
Their change to a webkit based browser is interesting. Will RIM devices will
be able to access a broad enough spectrum of mobile-oriented web-apps to
overcome the perception of a too-late too-little application marketplace
strategy? Will their implementation of webkit be too different from the
others? It will be interesting to see what happens.

------
WiseWeasel
Here's my possibly slightly less ridiculous proclamation as to what RIM should
do:

RIM should set up shop in a warmer climate, maybe the California Bay Area, so
that they can attract more software design talent hesitant to live in cold,
windy Toronto.

~~~
luminary
RIM has an R&D location in Redwood City since 2008.

------
dstein
The coming dominance of mobile/tablet oriented web apps running in the cloud
with persistent offline operation is what is going to keep RIM (and others)
from needing a better OS. Android and iPhone only have a temporary advantage
in the mobile space.

------
Shakattack
Doesn't this kill any hope for BlackBerry to have software revenue? Can't see
that being a good thing given how fast the app market is growing. They should
have bought Palm back then could.

------
s3graham
Hah! Was this really written after Oracle sued Google? So RIM should give up
patent protection to switch to Dalvik?

------
larsalan
Maybe RIM could work on porting apps to android behind the scenes and then
when everyone wants android on there bberries, bam. That os is free and open
source, right?

thought #2 open source to != profit. Ever heard of apple, microsoft, cisco,
etc.

Companies need to protect there intellectual property.

