RIM Changes Company Name to BlackBerry | Hacker News Reader

RIM Changes Company Name to BlackBerry

bloomberg.com

137 pointsyoungerdryas77 comments

This brings back many bad memories of Sun changing its ticker symbol from the venerable "SUNW" to "JAVA" -- may BBRY not share the same fate!

That said, let me take this moment to restate a prediction I have made a few times over the last two years: ORCL will, in the end, buy BBRY. After every customer that has a choice leaves, BBRY will be left with only those customers who can't actually leave. ORCL feasts on such wounded animals, and like a marine apex predator, can sense them from an ocean away...

In fairness to Sun, in the last 5-10 years of its existence, it really was The Java Company; a huge portion of all its sales went to companies deploying and scaling enterprise Java web applications.

Moreover, by the end of the '90s, Sun's original raison d'être --- Unix workstations --- was gone and buried.

Yes, workstations were gone -- and they had been replaced by server revenue. Contrary to your assertion, server revenue (and associated service revenue) was the lion's share of Sun's revenue; if you add up all Java revenue (primarily Java ME) and subtract all Java NRE, Java was -- pathetically -- net neutral to Sun. So to those of us who actually brought in revenue instead of dining out on it, the ticker change was the embodiment of the persistent delusion that we were something other than a computing systems company...

My point was that the reason people bought Sun servers was to run enterprise Java apps.

(In case this makes it clearer: what percentage of large Sun server customers used the majority of those servers to run some kind of Java container server? Do you think maybe over 75%? From working with F-500 companies as a consultant in the mid-00's, my observation is closer to 100%; if you were a bank with Sun servers, the reason you had them was that Sun provided the can't-get-fired-for-choosing platform for J2EE.)

I think thats just an observational bias of companies that went the consultant route. Java was the hot new technology that consultants could bill lots of hours for, so you started to see it everywhere with weak internal IT/systems groups.

Working in the manufacturing/CAD industry at the time, I ran a Sun and SGI shop. Business applications that ran only on Solaris were a much larger demand generator for Sun hardware than some new fancy runtime that at the time could be confused for a passing fad.

We also liked Sun hardware for internal apps because they could literally run for 10+ years in a room filled with a constant mist of machine oil and coolant.

I'm not a Java consultant. The CAD Sun buyers were workstation customers, weren't they?

I do not think Java web applications were a smaller demand generator for Sun than Motif applications were.

Agreed. Sun bought StoageTek somewhere in there. Which was fun for me as both companies were resellers for my former employer. Sun was still selling a decent amount of server gear, they just sort of fell out of the consumer space.

Very true regarding workstations.

Although when the bottom dropped out of Sun workstation market, resellers started dumping stock and end users started stock piling.

I was slap bang in the middle making cash. I made enough to buy a new Land Rover Defender in a week :)

Gone are those days :(

> Moreover, by the end of the '90s, Sun's original raison d'être --- Unix workstations --- was gone and buried.

Never thought about this in this way. It is kind of sad that Sun suffered directly from Linux success.

Unix workstations were largely slaughtered by Windows NT (and faster/cheaper PC hardware). Linux wasn't helping, but it didn't have the professional CAD etc. software at the time.

Huh, first thing I thought of when seeing "BBRY" was Burberry (which is BRBY on the London Stock Exchange).

Chief Executive Officer Thorsten Heins is unveiling the first phones built on the BlackBerry 10 operating system this morning in New York. The new software is designed to let users multitask more effectively than on rival devices, including the iPhone. Heins is looking to grab the attention of smartphone buyers who have dumped their aging BlackBerrys in recent years for Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Google Inc.’s Android.

Seriously? Your plan to fight iPhones and Droid devices is to tout your phone's multitasking ability?

How many consumers complain about their phone's multitasking capabilities? How many consumers even understand what that means?

[edit: If they are talking about the business meaning of "multitask", as some child comments have noted, then I agree that this would be a cool feature. I also find it annoying how hard it is to do work in multiple apps at once.]

I'm tired of pogo-sticking in and out of the various apps to get one thing done. For example, if I get an email asking if I'm ok to meet at 3pm on Friday at Joey's Cafe. Today, I need to jump to my calendar app, see if I'm available at that time. I also need to check where Joey's Cafe is located via Google Maps, so I can make it over there after my 1pm meeting. I also need to jump to my task manager app to remind myself to prep notes in advance of the meeting.

The vision painted here is to move swiftly between the core things you do the most. Whether or not the execution is sufficient, it's hard to say without trying it out in person. But the BlackBerry Hub looks like a good start.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/30/3929760/blackberry-z10-rev...

I find this to be an incredible annoyance on iOS, particularly iOS 5 and earlier, but I have to say that Android really nails this experience with the 'intent' model - I don't think twice before opening Google Maps directly from a Google Calendar event that was itself created directly from an email that I read in my inbox.

I read that as "multitask" in the original meaning of the word; not the technical sense. For example BB has a single inbox for all your email and messaging services. You don't need to fire up multiple apps just to check your different services.

Not to bog down in meaningless pedantry, but the original meaning of the word "multitask" was in its technical sense as applied to computing.

Interestingly enough, the Verge review calls out the OS for being poor at handling multitasking, so it sounds like they don't even have much of a leg to stand on there:

"I don't feel BlackBerry 10 deals with multitasking or notifications as effectively as other platforms do (most notably Android), but it's not a total strikeout."

http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/30/3929760/blackberry-z10-rev...

This is a welcome change. Ever since I worked there back in 2004 as a co-op, the incessant jokes about having a "RIM job" were funny at first, but got tiring.

Ignoring that, this makes total sense from the consumer perspective. Nobody knew who RIM was, all they knew was BlackBerry. It is going to simplify a lot of things for them in terms of marketing and communications.

I've been anticipating this launch since last April, when I first heard about the Dev Alpha prototype devices. After having used them for over 8 months, and actively developing for the platform, I can say that I was pretty happy with today's launch announcement. I didn't really expect it to be Earth-shattering, and it wasn't.

It will be a long time before BlackBerry has the impact that Apple has in the marketplace. Today's launch wasn't going to have the pomp and flair everyone expected. Sales are not going to be a huge spike. Rather, things will ramp up slowly for BlackBerry. More and more people will try it out, and be wooed by the much improved interface. Your stalwart users of legacy BlackBerry will likely move over in droves though.

I actively develop for Android as well, and I can say that BlackBerry development has done so many things right. It is really a dream to develop apps for. As a user, it's fantastic too.

In the future, I really think RIM will be competing against Android/Google, rather than Apple. Android 4.2 is a thing of beauty, and really raises the bar. I don't think BB10 is quite there, but all the pieces are in place. The next 6-12 months will see a rapid evolution of BB10, and we can better assess how things will progress.

> It will be a long time before BlackBerry has the impact that Apple has in the marketplace.

That's a tad optimistic, no? Pretty much impossible, unless you expect them to reinvent two or three multi billion dollar markets in the coming decade.

I'm ex-Waterloo too and remember Mike Lazaridis showing me the first model of BlackBerry in my entrepreneurship class 13 years ago. It was a fantastic time, but sadly long gone.

> In the future, I really think RIM will be competing against Android/Google, rather than Apple.

Considering the huge penetration the iPad has had in the enterprise, they'd better be competing with both. Underestimating Apple has got them to where they are now.

> incessant jokes about having a "RIM job" were funny at first

They didn't exactly help themselves.

    $ whois rim.jobs

    [...]

    Registrant:
      Domain Administrator
      Research In Motion Limited
      295 Philip Street
      Waterloo ON N2L3L3

> I actively develop for Android as well, and I can say that BlackBerry development has done so many things right. It is really a dream to develop apps for. As a user, it's fantastic too.

I haven't seen and tried BB's SDK, but could you elaboreate more? Didn't they still use Java ME (which sucks compared to Android's IMO)?

BB10 is nothing like the older platforms, which kinda sucked. You couldn't even run code on a test device without getting it signed by RIM, and the service crashed frequently.

The phrase "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic" comes to mind.

What else do you want the marketing department to do, when the flagship product they've been prepping to sell has been delayed for so long?

Ok, maybe there isn't else they can do. That doesn't mean that this rebranding is going to help.

Of course not. But it isn't the problem either. It's just a PR shrug.

Pogue seems to like it: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/technology/the-blackberry-...

>A subtle light blinks above the screen to indicate that something — a text, an e-mail message, voice mail, a Facebook post — is waiting for you.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't android do the same thing? It seems to be the case for my Galaxy Nexus.

No no, on the Gnex the light is below the screen, it's completeley different.

In other news, the light on my gnex blinks white for sms, green for app notifications and blue for facebook notifications EXCEPT that the facebook messenger app (seperate from the main fb app) blinks green.... why?

>> why? Same as the 'why' for many Android apps. The API is huge, the potentials on different devices are barely countable and Google's developer advice is sadly lacking. This inevitably results in developers forgetting things like LED colours etc.

(I'm a fan of Android, I wouldn't buy a phone without it at the moment, but it really is a weak point. Especially when compared to iOS where Apple seems to really nail home how an app is supposed to behave on their platform)

No iOS devices even hae a notification LED, so how can Apple "nail home how an app is supposed to behave?" Or is your point that you'd assume Apple would accomplish that if it had the LED?

Apologies. I mustn't have made myself clear. I was referring to documentation of features in general. One could of course extrapolate this to how Apple would handle LEDs, but it wasn't really my point.

To clarify I really do like Android, I just wish documentation of recommended behaviour was brought front and centre.

There is a setting which flashes camera flash LED on alert. But I guess GP ment general uniformity in behaviour.

Blackberry did this before Android, and further most Android devices (including most Nexus devices) abandoned notification LEDs. I was very glad that the SGSIII brought it back.

This [1] is the BlackBerry website on the day of their massive rebrand and the launch of BlackBerry 10. I had to hide my Chrome bookmark bar on my 13-inch screen just to see any mention of the new OS. Maybe they should tell someone in the website department that it's kind of a big deal.

[1] http://i.imgur.com/EjrIvJY.jpg

Edit: I guess someone at BlackBerry saw my comment and changed it several minutes later ;) It's now (at 4PM EST) a lot more relevant to today's events: http://i.imgur.com/HvGw9tF.jpg

As much as it probably is a good idea, it's a little worrying when a company amidst a crisis takes the time to work on their brand name and make room for that announcement in a webcast that literally defines whether or not the company will survive another 18 months.

I think it's a positive to not dilute their brand into segments. They want 'BlackBerry' being talked about - not RIM and Blackberry. It's simplifying, decluttering.

It seems like a smart move to me. Unfortunately, I think it's too little, too late.

Not so sure, there are a lot of Canadians, including myself, that are hoping they create a good platform with a good touch interface. They could have done this 5-10 years ago, and been Apple - but for whatever reason they just stopped innovating. If Canadians switch back to BB, and other people around the world start picking them as their preferred brand, then could easily be 10s of millions of sales initially, and as they improve the platform offerings and devices, could be hundreads of millions of sales.

All the Canadians in the world will not save them.

If they do manage to turn around, it will be one of the biggest turnarounds since maybe Apple or IBM.

If you take all Canadians 18-65, you'd maybe have 20 million in sales. Apple sells that many iPhones in a month.

This isn't as worrying as when they start suing blackberry (as in, the actual fruit) stands.

They should have done this a long time ago. Not that it would have changed much considering their flubs on the implementation side, but the BlackBerry brand was always much stronger than RIM.

Now when people make snide references to "that fruity consumer electronics company" one can be deliberately obtuse about which one.

As a bonus, they're even "beleaguered".

Every time someone uses that phrase they will be referring to Apple :)

So true, I never hear consumers talk about Blackberry anymore.

Well, if nothing else it will probably make the SEO for their job-site a lot easier.

Usually companies want to restructure their corporate initiatives away from a dying brand. This makes it all the more obvious that all of their eggs are in one basket.

This move makes sense and is well overdue in my mind -- at least from a consumer perspective. The Playbook was branded as the "BlackBerry Playbook" not the RIM Playbook, which was ridiculous IMO (and still is). But they've made the decision and recognize that the RIM name is probably unrecognizable to the consumer, but BlackBerry is. I'm fairly certain the rest of their offerings to business (ie. BIS or BES) are associated or under the BlackBerry name anyways.

Dropping the "RIM" name makes sense, although the timing is distracting

I don't know if I agree with you. I felt like there was quite a clear delineation between the RIM and the Blackberry brands and I don't get the sense that consumers were confused about the two. Also I feel like RIM would have been a good name to keep if they decided down the road that they wanted to licence their software services technology to other companies and keep those efforts separate from their consumer hardware division (aka "Blackberry").

For a long time, I agreed that the RIM parent company makes sense if their software services were being licensed out.

I'm making an assumption (and I think the rebrand supports this) that RIM/BB has made a conscious decision to be a consumer hardware company, that is their priority, and any software services are a value-add or in support of their hardware. While this comparison is weak, it's almost like how Apple can be seen as a hardware company and the iCloud is in support of it.

I do think the renaming was probably made in haste, to coincide with BB10's release

It won't help. They are as dead as a doornail.

Further proof: http://youtube.com/watch?v=WlsahuZ_4oM

Anyone I know who talks about Blackberry never says RIM or Research in Motion.

I even suggested it once over at reddit in /r/blackberry that RIM should just change its name to BlackBerry but was down voted into oblivion. Now there's a post about the naysayers who said it should happen.

I'm Canadian, proud BlackBerry are Canadian and I agree the name change makes sense I'm glad they did it.

I got a BlackBerry job doesn't have the same ring to it

Unless that's what the kids are calling it these days..

I think it's a smart move, and would allow them to more effectively market their products/services on competing platforms. Now that BlackBerry does not necessarily mean a particular brand of smartphone, we can see BlackBerry for Android/iPhone/Windows Phone, etc.

Deja Vue in so many ways in what happened to Palm. They had a new OS and devices, they were also Canadian based.

So given that somebody will buy RIM aka Blackberry and then do an HP on them.

Hope I'm wrong, but I see a Nortels chance of it not panning out that way sadly.

Here in Ottawa, the advertisements on the sides of the bus advertise jobs at QNX rather than for RIM or Blackberry.

QNX is a subsidiary of BlackBerry, but they still do all their own hiring and a fair bit of marketing. You'd be applying to work at QNX, not at BlackBerry. Not to say there isn't a ton of crossover.

Yes, but if it was fashionable to work at RIM, they would mention that in the ads.

Too much, too little, too late. These could be great phones (and actually look very nice), but it doesn't matter. BB is a dead company walking. It lost its market share long ago and they aren't going to suddenly magically get it back.

What was "Research in Motion" supposed to mean anyway? I never got that.

It's an identity. What does Apple mean? An identity.

The problem here is all the accrued Brand Equity was for the BlackBerry brand/identity, not RIM's

It was intended to mean that they had cutting-edge technology, and rather than keeping it stultified in a lab they were brining it to everyone, pushing it out to the world and making it a part of the busy lives of their customers.

That sounds like the perfect market to be in. Blackberry is no longer an established player in the mobile space. The brand brings up connotations of dinosaurs. The name switch would be better in reverse. But what they're doing today is doubling down on a lost cause.

Still sounds better than the buzzwordesque Integrated Electronics and Microcomputer Software.

It reminds me of when Tandy Corp. changed their name to "RadioShack" (without the space).

Up next: Apple changes its name to iCompany.

Seems like research has stopped.

Good idea: tie the identity of your company 100% to your failing phone line.

Problem solved.

Do you think they are sad they no longer have RIM jobs?

http://rim.jobs won't work no more, :(

Oh this smells of desperation. Rebranding the company costs headed stationary, signs etc - not that cheap and RIMberry are the last who can realy afford it. I honestly don't think they have thought this thru, its like closing my eye's and going you can't see me now. Still have the shite middle managment to mess things up.

totally agree , rebranding is quite expansive and it is just one of these voodoo idea when everything else failed ... just sell the company already and you'll be better off ... or go with android and make the best hardware money can afford...

Oh they missed a great opertunity to sell rebranded hardware and move there enterprise software onto linux. That would of opened up a more rubust and profitable area they ended up giving away selling lots of copies of Microsofts exchange for others.

They then overly focused upon the consumer market at a neglect of the business area, which was the core. The upshot is they ended up alienating a lot of influential business types and that filtered down into lots of bad words about them and a share price reflected it as in they could do no right in the end.

Now QNX was a good move, but that has been a overly slow adoption to the extent that they ended up having to release newer versions of there older OS. During this phase they lost a lot of good staff and things got messy. But we now after years laetr have the product they should of had at least a year ago.

The new OS is nice, but for many it is too little too late. They have now in some ways aliented there growing market by not having a cheap device available and no OS upgrade available for there lesser handsets. They will for all appears end up alienating there growing markets in an attemt to regain there lost business customers.

Still the same opertunities being missed and whilst I wish them luck they have yet to try and cash in on Apple and Android users via a paid for application that does there email and messaging. Some would pay for that and it could even get people thinking about there phones next time they upgrade. But that is another of many missed opertunities they just seem to let slip by. The upper managment has changed, a lot of staff have changed and with that the problem really has to be in the middle.

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