On: Behind RIM’s $485M Write-off

[kabdib]

Side note: I had no idea that Jean-Louis Gassée was writing financial stuff like this. I always wondered what he wound up doing after Apple and Be.

[purephase → kabdib]

Interesting. I didn't notice that at first. Thanks for pointing it out.

[Turing_Machine → purephase]

He was also one of the leading forces behind the Apple Newton, so he knows a bit about Tablet Fail.

[kabdib → Turing_Machine]

Well, so do I (since I worked on the Newton). :-)

[ConstantineXVI → Turing_Machine]

Slightly different fail in the Newton's case. The tablet/PDA/smartphone/MID/palmtop market was niche at best and effectively non-existent at worst when the Newton came out; it simply was in too small of a market to go anywhere. The PlayBook, OTOH, showed up in a crowded, relatively well-established market, and so far has almost totally failed to get traction with either developers or customers.

[wmf → ConstantineXVI]

IIRC the Palm Pilot outsold Newton by a large factor during the same years, so Newton was a failure even relative to the size of the market.

[mikeash → wmf]

The Newton was supposedly profitable for Apple. It was killed not because it lost money, but because it was overall not a good use of resources for Apple despite making a modest amount of money.

[protomyth → mikeash]

I have heard that if you factor in the development costs, it was not profitable.