

RIM CEO terminates BBC Click interview - sdfx
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/9456798.stm

======
blinkingled
The interview showed glimpses of desperation, edginess and plain frustration
which speak volumes about RIM's approach to handling the drastically altered
smart phone market.

Lazaridis kept using the words "singled out" - his reasoning behind it was
because they were so successful. He was trying to convince that the carpet has
not been pulled from below RIM's feet.

It showed that RIM doesn't really "get" it. They think the world is being
unfair to them - they think _that_ as a problem - not the facts that they
couldn't get decent, modern smartphone hardware with a competent OS (for the
market) out in years. They are just like Nokia - except they believe they have
no problems.

Sure Blackberry has the best security architecture, it has never had security
issues until they started using WebKit, lots of people still use it. There is
no denying that. What is problematic is that those things do not matter in the
battle that RIM is fighting against Android and iOS. No sane Joe with a dumb
phone is going to find BB compelling for his smart phone upgrade. It's just
not cool.

What RIM needs is a dual OS/dual hardware strategy - let the BB folks keep
doing "Pro" phones like they do today with BB OS. Let a fresh hardware and
software team look at producing great consumer phones with a consumer OS. The
OS part of it is a big problem - I am sure RIM could put together a great
phone after trying - not so sure about the OS part. They could be better off
taking Android and making it better and distinct.

~~~
bruceboughton
Oddly, Blackberry is insanely cool amoung the teen crowd in the UK (well,
London anyway).

Not sure why, since they have no need for business class email. BBM seems to
be the main driver, even though there are plenty of altenatives on other
platforms.

~~~
JonnieCache
_> Blackberry is insanely cool amoung the teen crowd in the UK_

It's definitely a London thing. They became hugely popular in the summer of
2009, rapidly making their way into the constantly shifting memepool that is
the grime scene.

Witness "Maxwell D - Blackberry Hype":
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qtShEs5LQs>

Believe it or not this isn't paid product placement. Hence he lists RIM's
competitors in the intro. They probably still sent maxwell some units though.

EDIT: BBM was also heavily used as a way of sending shouts to pirate radio
stations. You couldn't really ask for better marketing. It's very much waned
now though.

~~~
pedalpete
It is definitely not just a London thing. I was on a flight from Seattle to
Los Angeles and the guy next (mid-20s) to me was using an old iPhone to play
games. His phone was a blackberry. I found it really strange, but he told me
that all of his friends were using BBM and he felt like he was left out, so he
went back to BlackBerry.

In Canada the Blackberry outsells Android in the teen crowd according to a
report in the Globe and Mail a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, I can't find the
article now.

~~~
elvirs
I can say the same is in Istanbul and Baku, iPhones are used for games only,
its nice to have an iPhone but its percieved as really cool to use Blackberry
as a phone for daily use.

------
Jun8
At this level, i.e. CEO, this is pure idiocy, you should have a canned
response for such questions, in fact deflating such questions is part of your
_job_ , for heaven's sake!

And they _did_ have problems in India and Middle East, where governments
wanted access to emails. Rather than bailing out like this, RIM can turn it
into a PR victory, like Google did with China, saying (i) "see how secure our
systems are, governments can't break in" and (ii) "we are standing up for
freedom, democracy, etc."

~~~
trotsky
_and (ii) "we are standing up for freedom, democracy, etc."_

I think that this may be why he doesn't want to talk about the issue. Because
as far as I understand it, the solution reached (at least with India) was to
agree to co-locate the encryption servers in country and give the governments
"live access" to them. So they didn't agree to hand over the keys but
basically gave unfettered access all the same.

------
halo
I don't understand his reaction, especially when RIM's position is perfectly
defensible.

A reasonable response: "I want to assure our customers that the BlackBerry
platform is, and will remain, secure, but it is necessary for RIM to follow
the laws of the jurisdictions we operate in".

------
dotBen
Rory Cellan-Jones, the interviewer, is a former colleague from my days at the
BBC. Just to give some context, he is one of the BBC's most experienced
business news journalists, in addition to being a more recent technology
journalist.

But in a word of sound-bites and short-quotes, I'm surprised Rory didn't
consider - or at least pick up after the initial rebuttal - that if Lazaridis
in any way answered the question pivoted around security that it could cause a
significant PR issue and even effect the share price of RIM (given it's a core
value of RIM).

I'm totally across the issue being refereed to and to be fair, it isn't a
security issue _to RIM_. Sure, it is a security issue to its users,
potentially. But it's not that RIM has a security issue with its technology,
it has a privacy issue from draconian laws while operating under certain
government conditions.

But my reason for mentioning Rory is an experience business journalist is that
this is not a technology matter, it's a subtle business-related matter, which
I'd have thought Rory of all people would be cognizant of.

~~~
rbarooah
It sounds as though you are suggesting that journalists should not ask CEOs
questions about issues that might affect PR or the stock price.

Am I misreading you?

~~~
adolph
I think the parent commenter is saying that it is unproductive for a
journalist to ask questions that they know the CEO cannot answer because of
the CEO's fiduciary responsibility to their enterprise. That isn't saying not
to ask, but to pick up on cues from the interviewee that pursuing a particular
line of questioning isn't going to be successful.

------
pedalpete
I strangely want to give kudos to both sides. The phrasing of 'the problems
you've had in terms of security' is seriously misleading and very poorly
worded. I guess I've never seen the behind the scenes legal voices jump in
before, but clearly, that question is baiting (unless RIM has some security
issues I'm unaware of).

On the other side, cool that the BBC posts this for all to see, rather than
just hiding it away somewhere.

Though for the general public who don't know if RIM has a security flaw or
not, what effect does something like this have??

~~~
jeroen
[http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-07-29/india...](http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-07-29/india-
business/28288674_1_encryption-level-officials-of-key-security-blackberry-
server)

"The [Ministry of Home Affairs] has asked the [Department of
Telecommunication] to tell [RIM] in no uncertain terms that its emails and
other data services must comply with formats that can be monitored by security
and intelligence agencies."

The Indian government has threatened to cut off Blackberry services if RIM
doesn't comply. I don't think calling that a security issue is off the mark.

~~~
nkassis
It should be called a privacy issue or something like that. I think the CEO
wanted to avoid having his platform deemed insecure as in has security holes.

~~~
cube13
I'm not too sure what the difference is here. One of the reasons that
Blackberries are so common in the business and government sectors is because
of the security(and privacy) that they provide. The two are basically the same
thing.

The Indian government was asking for a backdoor into the system. That's more
of a security issue than privacy.

~~~
architectzero
It's a security issue if the Indian government, or anyone else for that
matter, found a way to create a backdoor into RIM's system without RIM's
knowledge and consent.

As that isn't the case, then it's a privacy issue because the Indian
government demanded RIM put in a backdoor for reasons or surveillance of its
population.

Does this privacy issue potentially lead to a security issue? Yes, but not for
RIM, but rather for it's users that depend on the privacy of RIM's service
over which they may transmit sensitive information.

------
nikcub
I don't know how else the BBC could ask the question

RIM have never been upfront with a response to the question[1] (unlike Google,
and others) and what you saw in that response from Lazaridis was more of his
cool PR trained responses at work ('we are being singled out', 'we have a lot
of issues' etc. etc. blah blah balh)

[1] 'the question' is if RIM are providing backdoors to governments such as
India, Russia et al to access encrypted messaging on the blackberry net

~~~
dataminer
I doubt if Lazaridis response would have been any different, since he is quite
defensive these days, but BBC could have framed it as a privacy issue which is
a more accurate description.

------
tomelders
Sounds to me like he misunderstood the question and assumed the Beeb were
implying there's a serous security issue with the Blackberry device itself,
when the question was actually about the "security" concerns of certain
countries in which Blackberrys are sold.

~~~
btn
At the very end of the clip, Lazaridis says in closing the interview: "this
[the topic being discussed] is a national security issue". He knew exactly
what was being asked; and even if the phrasing was better, he'd have given the
same reaction.

~~~
iuguy
You should consider the possibility that if RIM are giving this type of access
to India and the Middle East, then what other countries have this type of
access?

If he had answered Rory's question, would something like the one I asked above
be the followup?

------
blauwbilgorgel
I found the final words of the interview the most striking:

>>This is not fair... What are you doing?... This is a national security
issue.

A national security issue for who? The US? Can't journalists ask questions
about national security issues anymore?

I can see why the US would be weary to have business people/officials
traveling to a country where all their conversations can be monitored. But is
this a CEO confirmation that the RIM india/pakistan issue has become a US
national security issue now?

A gag order would be perfect cause for this rather strange interview-stopping
behavior from someone I reckon has a lot of experience dealing with
journalists.

~~~
McP
I assumed he meant it was a security issue within the nations the interviewer
was asking about, not the US.

------
asawilliams
I think the way the question was worded could have confused people that are
not familiar with the current situation between RIM and those countries. The
question was worded in a way that made it sound like the device were insecure,
but it is the very opposite, they are too secure by these countries standards.
Lazaridis should have handled the question better by clarifying the question
and then answering. He was not his best.

~~~
spinchange
This is like text-book CEO stuff, right? I think his reaction and cutting the
interview short confused the issue even more. If I didn't already know the
background, I would think there really must be a security issue, not that some
foreign governments are threatening RIM because it's _too_ secure. I think he
could've easily batted that one away, if he hadn't taken it like a personal
insult.

------
samstokes
Ironically for Lazaridis, this is the first I'd heard of RIM's "security
problems in India and the Middle East" - anyone have a link to the original
story?

~~~
hubb
googling "rim india" while give you a pretty broad range of stories covering
the topic -- here's a sample: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-31/rim-s-
agreement-wit...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-31/rim-s-agreement-
with-india-is-likely-to-foreshadow-wider-government-access.html)

basically some middle eastern governments want easier access to BB users
emails.

------
stumm
You might want to update the link to the actual article rather than a BBC tech
landing page. :-)
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/9456798.s...](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/9456798.stm)

------
JCB_K
Stephen Fry (also BBC) on Twitter this morning: "On way to meet Mike Lazarides
of Blackberry. Excited: he was an absolute pioneer. Interested to know what's
in the pipeline. Playbook etc."

I don't really understand, why would Fry tag along to someone else's
interview?

------
yuhong
Compare with Sergey Brin of Google, BTW.

