RIM Takes $485M Hit Over Unsold PlayBook Tablets
pcmag.com
pcmag.com
http://blogs-images.forbes.com/marcwebertobias/files/2011/05...
Amateurs could not possibly lose a half a billion dollars competing head-on with a juggernaut and ignoring the obvious time and time again.
UPDATE: Enough snark. Here’s my post-moretm: They drank their own kool-aid. Every single thing about it strikes me as the work of a team trying to sell to their management rather than to the market. Or, the work of a team that was only allowed to build what their management wanted to succeed rather than what the market would reward with success.
Their advertising brags and boast of how awesome it is, but nobody who actually talks to customers would believe that this is true or believable. Management, on the other hand, might believe it is awesome if they were reading the ad copy while looking at some incomprehensible PowerPoint with fancy graphics.
Their choice of technologies and features hits the sweet spot of what the company is prepared to fund rather than what customers are prepared to buy.
The whole thing seems inward-facing, a little like certain start-ups that are buzzword compliant because that’s what VCs want to fund rather than because that’s what markets want to buy.
But they never did. Even in early 2010 (before their sales started crashing down) RIM was pretty much "worry-free" according to my friend working there. This was clearly a matter of vision and leadership failure.
I think they were banking on their "huge market share" in mobile phones (that has since began sinking down) to get buy in. "Oh I have a Blackberry I should buy this thing." That's a good market to shoot for if there's a compelling reason for the customer to do that, but I didn't see a single feature that would really push someone to buy a Playbook over an iPad even as an existing RIM customer.
It's even worse than that. The useless thing couldn't do email. You know, the one thing that made RIM a success in the first place? Yeah.
Tablets and phones don't seem to directly compete, but then again they're both mobile devices.
If that's a direct quote, it's an unfortunate choice of words.
The big problem: no apps.
So maybe owning it and getting used to it takes some time, but it would take a lot of convincing for me to think about buying one after the quick store browsing. Most of the people around me didn't seem very interested in it, either.
Does it have a kindle app?
Swipe up from the bottom edge of the bezel to get to home screen. How is that hard? Personally I really like how PlayBook uses the bezel for UI.
>Does it have a kindle app?
Not that I know, it has a Kobo app. No side-loading though.
Perhaps I am biased, I have an old HP 48GX programmable calculator, learning to use it required a fair amount of work, but that was expected. For a tablet I expect to be able to use it pretty easily by picking it up. I can certainly listen to why you like the playbook, but the 2 minutes my wife played with an ipad2 she was already adding calendar events and playing with the book app.
I don't particularly care for Apple the company, but the 2 minutes hands-on examination heavily favored the ipad2 for what I would call the average user. The Android ui also seemed pretty intuitive, but maybe I'll re-examine the Playbook in more depth.
I agree that just putting the device on display with no instructions can cause confusion. Better choice would have been to run that tutorial whenever someone tries to use the unit, before switching to the real thing. But then what are the CSRs in the store for?
Once you know how to use it (and it is nowhere near as complex as mastering an HP calculator ;) ) the UI is pretty straightforward.
Developers who use those SDK's might make a PlayBook version just so they can be the "only fish in the pond" (unlike other app stores, where it's easy to get lost among the zillions of other apps).
But it's pricey, there's no apps, it's missing key functionality, and RIM execs have their head up their own ass.
The lack of apps is a symptom, not a problem. The development environment is very poor, the app store itself is slow and badly designed, and it's missing important glue like Android's killer universal share screen.
They didn't want to cannibalize their phones, and missed the fact that their phones are going away - and that phones, computers, tablets are turning into a spectrum of connected devices that are expected to do more or less the same things but in different form factors appropriate to different contexts.
The hardware itself is pretty awesome, so that's not at fault. And there are neat UI touches like the active borders. But overall, it's just a terrible operating system, and they didn't have a clue what it takes to create a developer ecosystem. Even the apps they do have feel like cheap knock-offs. Have you played Angry Apes?!
It's no wonder that RIM's now talking about pushing its enterprise lock-down functionality - its only real selling point at this stage - to iPhones and Android devices.
The developer environment sucks, the APIs have always sucked, the signing system has always sucked.
Keep in mind that until very recently, the BlackBerry OS had no way for you to execute a HTTP request without implementing your own logic about which of the 500 different esoteric connectivity options you wanted to use. It's just a clusterf*ck.
Hopefully they dump their CEO(s) and get someone who understands the current and rapidly changing mobile and tablet markets. If not, RIMs days are numbered.
Depends on the country, Blackberries are mostly (to solely) corporate in the US, but in Europe it tends to be used a lot by teenagers and young adults for extensive messaging thanks to BBM + good keyboard.
On the other hand, I don't see how they'd get that demographic a BB tablet, so you probably have a good point.
If you want a cheap phone with an inexpensive text-messaging plan, RIM is your go-to device.
Actually the same is true in the US for people who want cheap plans.
That being said, the utility of a keyboarded-tablet is somewhat dubious at best. It'd feel like a hobbled netbook.
The device is named a "PlayBook" yet they're targeting the enterprise market. That seems wrong. Did they start by targeting general consumers then shift their target market without changing the device's name?
At least RIM is sticking to their guns and forging ahead with the device, unlike the wishy-washy maybe-we-will-maybe-we-won't emanating from HP regarding webOS.
I as a non-native speaker was definitely not aware of the term, so my first association was "play" - I am sure there are many more like me. This is definitely an unfortunate choice of a brand name.
Obviously I don't use one. No one uses one.
He didn't really have an answer for why he didn't just get an iPad if he wants something like OSX on it.
So how about giving those PlayBooks away with a box of Cracker Jack's? There must be some kids who want a tablet that can't send email and doesn't have any games.