RIM reportedly bails on PlayBook, considers exiting tablet market
bgr.com
bgr.com
* RIM was a brilliant company with a ton of talented engineers and a few managers. RIM released cool products and became successful.
* RIM instituted a promotion policy based largely on seniority. This ticked off a lot of talented engineers and over the years they started exiting. At the same time it attracted the kind of middle manager who likes this kind of policy.
* RIM became bloated with management (two CEOs? two CEOs!), lost the last shreds of its talented engineers and started spinning out of control. RIM is large, and like any large spinning object, it is hard to tell that it's spinning if you are standing on it. The management cannot tell that they are out of control.
The (obvious) first is the Kindle Fire... This device will succeed and will cannibalize sales from tablets not called iPad (and maybe the iPad too). Plus the Fire is virtually the same hardware as the playbook at $200 with a thriving ecosystem.
The second is the state of Android on the Playbook. It just came to light (through some very damning articles) that virtually no android apps will work on this device. The idea was gimmicky and the execution on that idea seems to be even worse. There's no android utopia here.
I hate to say it, but RIM has no other option than to sit and watch. Maybe they can maintain a decent niche in the corporate world, maybe not. The reality is that they are not in control of their destiny. Their survival depends entirely on what their competitors choose to do.
If RIM gets out of this market I think they're done. The next generation is going to be about ecosystems. Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google are all offering seamless access to their data, through their cloud offerings, across a wide range of devices. More than ever people are going to be using a single brand or OS just because it is easier, which is what post-pc devices are all about. There won't be many that will have a RIM phone and have an iPad or Amazon tablet just because data management will be a pain.
Will there be services for porting data between platforms?
All of these companies, except Google, will do their best to block it until governments intervene. Even with Google allowing this, it will be extremely difficult to do so and virtually no one will go through the effort. What if a third party app you use doesn't exist for the device you want to switch to?
Even in regards to carriers the average user considers it a bigger headache to switch carriers than to stay where they are, even though they're unhappy. Humanity, regardless of their plight, having difficulty adapting to change.
My perception has been that contracts with telecoms providers is largely a North American phenomenon, or at least, isn't as prevalent in the UK. IIUC, pay as you go is the big thing over there.. if only it would catch on here as well maybe people wouldn't consider it such a pain to switch carriers.
Exactly. They have probably missed the boat, but I think the right path for them would have been to create enterprise grade Android devices with special features (better encryption, phone integration, BBM, etc). There is a very decent space there to be exploited - and they tried - but doing it on their own was always going to a high risk venture. They at least should have hedged their bets.
I'm kind of shocked to see that in the end with the Playbook they went with such a generic manufacturer that Amazon was able to walk in and say "we'd like to order one of those too". That tells me they basically ordered off the shelf and had little proprietary input in to the hardware design. Which in turn says that RIM has no core differentiating expertise there and thus is essentially doomed to compete in the commodity hardware space - but attempting to do so at premium prices.
Although, in an odd way that clashes with the metaphor, it is kind of enjoyable watching them crash and burn.
I have very much enjoyed watching their fall...it's a strong case of schadenfreude. For some reason, their refusal or inability to innovate has me giddy. I suppose they represent (to me) a large corporation run by old guys who don't "get it" - and they're failing. Microsoft is in the same boat, but it's tougher (only slightly) to argue that they are falling.
I'm halfway through this bag of metaphorical popcorn, I hope I don't run out before RIM dies completely.
I cannot stand using my blackberry to do anything substantial as it just seems to want to discourage me from using it. I can't imagine how these devices appear to a non-techie.
I much much much prefer touchscreens, but thats mainly due to personal preference and needs to type things like /, diacritics, umlauts, etc...
I always temper that emotion with the knowledge that many are going to lose their jobs because of two incompetent CEOs.
It's very easy to assume you know what people want. The four people I mentioned above were as much a success because of timing as much as they were because of their genius.
As a Canadian, technology enthusiast and former RIM employee, it actually saddens me. A company with so much potential, so much talent quickly fading into the mist.
I wouldn't mind seeing Jim B removed and Mike L as Chairman of the Board. The shake-up they desparately need must occur at the top level. In the most recent layoffs, I've had friends and former colleagues in mid-management and lower positions let go. I'm not sure who thought that was an effective strategy to turn the company around. FAIL!
RIM's profits are down, due to the fact that they aren't selling as many devices as they used to. This means they don't need as many people to make and support the devices, as well as that they don't have as much money to keep paying them to do things that aren't needed.
Layoffs are always a touchy subject, and the corporate adage is usually that they have to challenge the remaining employees to "do more with less". The unspoken side of that is that they honestly don't have as much to do as they did before, and so in reality, they're doing the same with the same, proportionally.
So instead, someone who doesn't have your old business comes along and builds it instead. And you end up either buying them, or fading away.
too bad the playbook was too little, too late, and too expensive. hope they take a cue from HP and drop the price massively to clear their inventory
Additionally tablet only 3G data plans start at 20$ in Canada, and even the largest plans don't come near 80$.
RIM calls PlayBook discontinuation ‘pure fiction’
http://www.bgr.com/2011/09/29/rim-calls-playbook-discontinua...
I still call BS. They should become a hardware only company.
This doesn’t mean that they are existing the market, just that denying the rumour doesn’t really prove they’re still 100% behind it.
Given RIM's downward momentum in the past couple of years, I don't think its a surprise to see its latest products do poorly. In the tablet industry, they needed something that was revolutionary or at least something very very good in order to have a fighting chance. Releasing something mediocre that lacked some basic features (native email) that Blackberries are based upon portended doom. The $500 price point guaranteed it.
Look at the recent launch of RIM's Torch 9850. Received lukewarm reviews at best (CNN destroys it) amid lots of hype from RIM. Can you guess where this is headed?
I don't really know what RIM can do to reverse their continuing downfall, but I think it starts with acknowledging that their proprietary OS is not going to work and get on the Android bandwagon. Then hope to get lucky with a blockbuster product.
At least they still have most of Corporate America...for now.
It is utter shit in every way except how nice a screenshot touting the “cards interface” looks. No, not just sluggish hardware. Buggy multitouch. Crap copy/paste. Garbage browser with rendering bugs aplenty (on popular websites, even). Boring, Linux-like system icons. Each "panel" of system settings launches a sluggish app. No Dropbox or 1Password apps (cheap shot, but ecosystem matters).
I just wonder what their main "vision" was. Seems like they suffered the same paralysis as Motorola and Nokia. "We make mobile phones" mentality. Did they just assume that the future was ever thinner profit margins compensated by sales volume? That people would gladly sacrifice added functionality for added battery life and the convenience of hardware buttons?
At some point, they said "Hey, these touchscreen things are doing pretty well, let's get into the consumer market." But they had no idea how, and they've been releasing weak phones on a weak software ecosystem ever since.
On the other hand, if they'd stayed in their original market, I don't think it would work out much better. Doing enterprise features nicely is great, and could sell a lot of devices. But Apple's "touchscreen on a little computer" model is flexible, and all it would take is an enterprise focused software update from Apple or a few well written apps from a third party.
Competing against Apple's vision and manufacturing skill is going to be difficult to do, and in the long run I don't see RIM being one of the companies that manages to do it.
I do like that there has been talk of their next generation of QNX devices supporting Android applications, but that seems like but one step in the right direction, after having taken half a dozen steps in the wrong direction.
http://gdgt.com/discuss/the-amazon-tablet-will-look-like-a-p...
People say this, but I disagree. They shipped with working Flash and no email. If you look at their actions instead of what reporters and RIM's marketing team say, I think it's very difficult to call the Playbook a "business orientated" device.
All of their commercials even boasted about the Flash capabilities and the HD-movies-that-keep-playing-when-you-multitask-away. Business tablet? Yeah right.
http://www.itproportal.com/2011/09/29/rim-changes-stance-pla...