RIM Struggles Continue 197
dave562 writes with news of continued difficulties for Research in Motion, who yesterday announced a drop in profits, product delays and layoffs, causing their stock to plunge over 20%. "Why did RIM experience delays? Because RIM recognized that the current hardware wasn't cutting it, and had to upgrade to more powerful chipsets, co-chief executive Mike Lazaridis said. The first will be the BlackBerry Bold 9900 that RIM recently showed off." An article at the Wall Street Journal speculates that the company needs to be taken over or broken apart. "RIM’s operating system could be an intriguing purchase for Hewlett-Packard, which now owns the lovely but unpopular Palm operating system for smart phones. Handset makers like Motorola might be lured to buy The Astonishing Tribe, a Swedish company RIM recently bought that designs snazzy interfaces for smart phones. Patent companies, Google or other tech companies could scoop up QNX, the software company behind the PlayBook tablet computer, and RIM’s BBM messaging platform."
RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot (Score:4, Interesting)
Early leaders in their respective fields, but then got lazy because they didn't think their customers would go anywhere.
Then technologies and features got old and stale, and by the time they realized it, it could never catch up again.
These days, both RIM and slashdot are pretty much doing a slow drain around the bowl. Sad, because you remember what once was, and what could have been.
Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot (Score:4, Funny)
I have an iPhone.
Where do I go for my /. replacement?
Slahsdot is the best!!!1111!! (Score:2)
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I have visited OSNews a few times, and the readership there is decent, albeit not as good as slashdot. However, when it comes to news about Microsoft, I definitely prefer reading the articles and comments there. Slashdot has too many trolls, $hills and fanbois. Not everybody mind you, but it's not as easy to find unbiased opinions.
OSNews is nothing but a cesspool of wannabe tech know-it-all tools who like Slashdot despise Apple's successes and are tired of everyone slamming Windows, but at the same time keep proclaiming Linux will finally have it's break out year, Qt is the shit of all shit, Gnome isn't cool anymore, and with all that self-proclaimed genius they represent nothing in the real world.
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Reddit is the Blackberry to Slashdot's iPhone.
Yes, the discrepancy is that high. Even Digg is preferred over Reedit. Even Digg 2.0...
Slashdot still draws a very decent readership level.
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And, can we keep our low UIDs when we move? Didn't think so. I like being an old fart on the legacy service. Hell, I remember when images.slashdot.org was on a 90MHz Pentium box running slackware.
I guess that's why I still have my Blackberry. And T-Mobile let's me tether it on Ubuntu.
And why yes! I am a ham radio operator. Did you want to see my 77 baud Teletype?
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And, can we keep our low UIDs when we move? Didn't think so. I like being an old fart on the legacy service.
Well, perhaps you can, I don't consider mine especially low... I always was late to jump on trendy websites. :-)
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2. Compare Hitler to a car somehow
3. ????
4. Profit!
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I quite like Ars, but you can't trust them about anything that is related to Apple.
I like that on Slashdot it's more news and less opinion.
If this site just had the ability to collapse threads, so people could skip fanboy ratholes with a single click, it would be a big improvement.
Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot (Score:5, Interesting)
Pray tell me where I can get the intelligent (or at least semi-intelligent) discussions we used to have on slashdot in the olden days? I partially blame the fact that slashdot has become less interesting because I learned so much from it. Once you assimilated some knowledge, it becomes less interesting even though it gets featured again on slashdot.
True, slashdot has changed, the audience most likely has changed too. I still wait for a place "better" than slashdot and I'll be glad to get some links.
Compared to so many other sites, the intellectual level here in slashdot is astonishingly high. Go read the comments on youtube or yahoo answers sometimes. If you hate the spelling and grammar mistakes here and people who can't discern college and collage, or weather and whether, then you'll puke your guts out on every other site out there.
Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been visiting this site since 1998 and have yet to find somewhere else where so many comments are well thought out and rational. I don't think there's too many places on the net where you could have this level of conversation. Kuro5hin used to be good but 9/11 turned its members into rednecks pretty much overnight. It has its flaws, the Javascript bugs being the most annoying, but it was my first internet forum and I doubt I'll stop visiting any time soon.
Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
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As you run out into the parking lot, you briefly spot a flash of pink. Turning around you can't see anything but other people seem to be avoiding the area where you saw the flash.
Now you can see it. It is a spaceship and is pink, but that is the least of its problems. While it has the usual rockets and fins, it seems like it should fall apart right where it is. Perhaps Marvin designed it. Slartibartfast urges you on, as the sky is ... well you don't really want to know. You hop in the spaceship and th
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Nothing to be ashamed of. "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."
Kind of like the plot to Idiocracy.
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reddit.com. It's what slashdot should have been.
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Reddit is not an IT site. Its stories are mainly centered about having fun, internet memes and the decline of America. The discussions are at most at college level, with that characteristic childish obsession on puns.
However, there is much humanity in there. What impresses me most is that discussions, as childish they may be sometime, are never aggressive and in general follow an implicit politeness etiquette. Boobs may be shown or implied, but female members are extrovert, do participate, explain how they
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I suggest hacker news [ycombinator.com]
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There is a slider right above the comments section of the story (on the right side) which lets you control how many comments are hidden and how many are collapsed. You can move it all the way to the right for both and never have to expand a comment again.
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Early leaders in their respective fields, but then got lazy because they didn't think their customers would go anywhere.
Hey - I've got a five-digit ID, and I distinctly recall almost EXACTLY the same comment when I joined, only that time it was Slashdot being like Apple! Back then, Amelio was leaving, and things were looking grim for the Mac.
Not saying that RIM will go that way (oooooh no), but I just thought it was pretty funny.
Get 'em HP! (Score:3)
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Dumb idea by WSJ for HP to buy Nokia's OS. Really Dumb.
Nokia's OSs:
Symbian: Their main OS. Old and busted. It needs updating in a major way, which isn't happening, which is why they went to Meemo.
Meemo: Cool version of Linux that they didn't get behind fully and refused to throw the resources they needed to into to get it up to snuff quickly. Nokia is a big company with a lot of money. They just refused to spend enough of it quickly enough to get the OS going. This is the same issue HP is having now wit
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Ack, I'm an idiot. RIM, not Nokia.
RIM has good potential with QNX. It's an awesome OS.
HP buying it would be the same deal though. It doesn't have apps, needs relevant hardware, and needs development a lot of resources through at it to get it up to polish. HP has been making horrible decisions with all those things. Hopefully RIMs management will do better and learn from HP and Nokia's mistakes.
Android (Score:2)
Google bought Android. They didn't write it themselves.
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Fatal flaw (Score:3)
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The RIM tablet version 1.0 was unable to access email without tethering.
They think the tablet is just a peripheral of the phone. Apple spent a long time thinking iPhones are a peripheral of iTunes and have only very recently changed their tune. Of course, iTunes is a free computer program you download off the internet and a BB smartphone is an expensive smartphone... Okay so maybe they aren't thinking.
Time to parter with Microsoft or face the Abyss.
Or Google? Seems like an Android, customized for BES might be a spicy meatball in this market. Ya know, iPhone-competitive handset software with Blackberry-level corporate ad
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I got a Playbook from work on day 1. And on day 1 it had the ability to log into my gmail account using mobile gmail and it looked good and worked good.
In this day and age, when we talk about "accessing email" on a modern device, we don't mean logging into a web interface and poking around. What about new mail notifications? Unread email count?
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We rented a Playbook to check it out and compare it against the iPad my boss already has. The objective was to see how intuitive it was to set up and use without relying on help files or Google, and how it handled our existing Flash-based content.
On the plus column, its app switching is pretty slick compared to iOS. The front-facing speakers are a definite plus over the iPad, which shoots sound out the side instead of at you. On the Flash front, it runs it fairly well, with the usual caveats about Flash con
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Interesting review -- thanks. I had the opportunity to try a pre-release unit and had pretty much the same UI complaints. I *was* really impressed with the border-oriented navigation, I thought that was actually innovative.
As far as I'm concerned, the Playbook is just a Web-with-Flash tablet. I use my iPad and iPhone with Gmail (actually, Google Apps for My Domain or whatever it's called these days) and the email/calendar integration is quite good. Google interoperates with exchange as well, so when someb
Oh, that'd be perfect for HP. (Score:3)
Look! Let's buy out another failing company with a somewhat-interesting product to replace the last failing company with a somewhat-interesting product we bought. That'll totally work.
It's like when they bought Colubris to replace their Symbol OEM APs, only to buy 3Com a little while later. I dunno, maybe they can squeeze some money out of it.
RIM makes BlackBerry that can’t read email (Score:4, Funny)
Research in Motion have broken new barriers with the PlayBook tablet [newstechnica.com], a BlackBerry that can’t read email. And needs to be tethered to a phone.
“We feel a technology preview is just the thing we need to fight iPhone and Android in the consumer market,” said founder and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis. “The missing core functionality should be seen as areas of spectacular potential. Also, the board has ascertained that you should stay away from the brown acid, it’s not so good.”
The PlayBook has launched remarkably, with thousands of the devices being recalled for crippling operating system bugs straight after release.
In a double-tap Osborne through the head, the PlayBook uses the new QNX BlackBerry OS, which does not run current BlackBerry apps, will not be available on phones for another year and will not work on any current BlackBerry device. This is separate from OS 7, to be released soon, which will also not work on any existing BlackBerry. RIM’s present mobile carrier partners were “overwhelmed” to be stuck with so much already-obsolete stock.
RIM led the world into the smartphone era, several years before Apple’s iPhone turned everyone into the sort of twat you only ever used to see carrying a BlackBerry.
Technology industry rumours suggest a Microsoft takeover of RIM, considered an excellent match in competence and vision. “Synergy’s just another word for two and two makes one!” said Steve Ballmer. “We will assimilate your technological stench of death into our own.”
Palm 2.0 (Score:4, Insightful)
I've always thought of RIM as Palm Pilot, the next generation. The same people who bought the first PDA's from Palm were the first to use Black Berries. Carrying contacts and calendars around was, and is, a very good thing. But, when Black Berries did that, plus email, Palm's weren't competitive anymore. It took awhile, but Palm has all but disappeared (I know, Palm is now buried in HP somewhere.)
Well, email on a phone isn't a big selling feature anymore. It's all about the apps and web access. Email is just the bare minimum - a minimum that RIM couldn't even meet on their Playbook tablet launch (WTF!?)
So... as a Canadian, I'm sad to see RIM's decline. The game isn't over yet, there's still value in the Enterprise and Government sectors... for a while anyway. But, I think their days as a consumer brand are numbered. There really isn't room for 4 platforms in the mobile space... even 3 platforms is pushing it. iOS and Android are here for at least the medium term. Windows Phone and RIM have to fight it out for a distant #3.
If I had to bet, within 5 years, Microsoft will buy either all of RIM, or the pieces - both largely serve the corporate markets.
The good, the bad, and ugly (Score:2)
The bad: They made $769M profit same time last year while taking in less revenue so they are not growing in terms of profit. The PlayBook sold only 500K. Apple sold 3.27M iPads in slightly more than the first quarter it was available when it launched last year.
The ugly: Besides the delays and layoffs, does the management think newer hardware will solve their problems.
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RIM shipped 500k Playbooks, not sold
Bitcoin? (Score:2, Funny)
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Never did get why .. (Score:2)
They just kept releasing a bunch of basically identical models or why their profits would fall that far simply because a BB with a new outter shell was not released for a few months.
Look at it (Score:2)
RIM could have ported their software to iOS, Android, WebOS or WP7 and just stopped making their own hardware and OS. The real value of RIM is not in the phones -- it's the IP, the software and the customers they have. There's real value and money in the enterprise market but nobody really cares very strongly about which phone RIM sells. Having a choice of phones with a common software/apps/protocols stack for secure messaging would have been not a bad thing.
Now there's a chance that someone buys them or th
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Do people really like the BlackBerry keyboards? Really??? I have to carry a BlackBerry and I find the keyboard to be poorly designed and difficult to use. I can type faster and more accurately on my wife's iPod Touch. Don't give me the, "you get used to the size," line. I also use a Palm Pixi. Its keyboard is about 15% smaller than the BlackBerry and I can whale out messages on that tiny keyboard. As a matter of fact, everybody plays with my Pixi for a few seconds comments in amazement at how nice th
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Do people really like the BlackBerry keyboards? Really???
Yes. They're the best on the market. They have been for years. Their best effort to date is the keyboard on their Bold line.
I have to carry a BlackBerry and I find the keyboard to be poorly designed and difficult to use.
You're alone on that one. Even people who hate BB readily admit that it has the best keyboard around. Even the Droid Pro keyboard is a blatant copy (though it's more on-par with the torch, it's not nearly as good as the bold keyboard).
also use a Palm Pixi. Its keyboard is about 15% smaller than the BlackBerry and I can whale out messages on that tiny keyboard. As a matter of fact, everybody plays with my Pixi for a few seconds comments in amazement at how nice the keyboard is, especially compared to the BlackBerry keyboards.
The pixi keyboard is nice -- which is amazing considering how bad the keyboard on the Pre was. I think what people really like is the 'click' you ge
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No one at RIM is dumb enough to trust Apple, Google or Microsoft. If they went that way it'd be just be a matter of time before they were replaced by one of those companies' own service or became no more than one of many competing services on an OS they couldn't control. The likes of Apple certainly wouldn't allow an application to hook so deep into the OS to allow things like remote wipe, Android would necessitate development of many different tweaks for all the different hardware/OS version/operator combi
Over Analysis (Score:2)
The media is seriously over analyzing RIM's woes. It takes 5 minutes of hands-on use to see that Blackberries are woefully behind iPhones and Android devices.
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The media is seriously over analyzing RIM's woes. It takes 5 minutes of hands-on use to see that Blackberries are woefully behind iPhones and Android devices.
Funny, It also takes about 5 minutes of real-world use to see that iPhones and (most) Android devices are woefully inadequate for messaging and any task involving text.
Yeah, the keyboard and trackpad make all the difference. The Droid Pro tried with it's blackberry-clone keyboard, but without that trackpad selecting text and positioning the cursor is just an exercise in frustration.
Sure, they're lagging in the hardware department, but who cares? You gain more from having a boring phone with days of batte
Android Blackberry (Score:2)
RIM could look at two options: 1) introduce an Android Blackberry or 2) slowly wither and die. Bifurcation, you bet.
RIM will never fail. Canadian pride is at stake! (Score:2)
RIM is kind of a matter of national pride in Canada. It's sort of their Apple, a company they are immensely proud of and so on and so forth.
The Canadian government would probably step in to keep the company going and also to block any sale to a foreign buyer, particularly an American buyer. There is no way they will allow an HP or Microsoft to come in and swallow the company and surely terminate a vast number of Canadian workers. A whole ecosystem has been built around RIM, their suppliers and contractors
They can't compete in the consumer market until... (Score:2)
Re:RIM is still golden (Score:4, Interesting)
When they had a superior product they were on top. They failed to realize the threat the iPhone presented, and Google saw the potential of touch interfaces and joined the race on time.
RIM thought they were untouchable and when they decided to move it was a rushed response that came too late.
The only salvation I see for RIM is to embrace Android.
Port the encryption and infrastructure, along with the marvelous keyboards they make to Android and I'm sure they'll survive. Or even grow. Nothing is stopping them from trying and remember that they could even skin android to look like a blackberry. But it'd run aps and have an awesome browser and all the google utilities...
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Port the encryption and infrastructure, along with the marvelous keyboards they make to Android and I'm sure they'll survive. Or even grow.
I had a company-issued blackberry for about a decade. Each year or 18 months or so they would get refreshed, and I'd get the latest model. The early models were solid and great in almost every way, but each subsequent model was worse than the one it replaced. They haven't made a decent keyboard in at least 5 years. Their screens got more pixels and more colors each year, but the overall quality of the screens got slowly worse. My employer supports iOS now, and I'm happy to never have to touch a blackbe
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I do believe the crappy keyboards were the ones that did not follow the monolithic approach that got them famous. All the keyboards I've tried (recent or old) that had that familiar layout worked great (my opinion, obviously)
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QNX might be the best thing ever. They got here too late, in my opinion.
Most would argue Mac OS X is the best operative system on the market (I believe it is) but it's current market share is around 7%. Quality does not mean you'll win.
And so far, QNX is a package full of great intentions, not yet a finalized and actually good thing (from what I read)
finalized? (Score:2)
Not sure that is actually a word, but have a peek at:
http://www.qnx.com/company/30ways [qnx.com]
QNX has been around, and literally around you, for a long time.
disclaimer: former employee.
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http://www.google.com/search?q=finalized [google.com] - yes, it is a word.
Never said it hasn't, but RIM's "port" seems to be taking it's time and most of the features promised are still just that - promises.
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Hey—ignore all the haters. I'm just glad to hear you could find work, especially in this economy, and with that job in Iraq on your CV.
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Every sales figure I've seen shows Droid and iPhone battling for the top two spot and Blackberry at number three and falling further behind
Apple and Andorid only recently (this year) passed RIM -- though in the case of Apple still within the margin of error.
BlackBerry is new to the #3 spot, I can only assume that you started following things this year?
They really need to get their act together if they want to stay at #3, let alone knock Apple out of it's newly acquired #2 spot. The weak offerings last year and the "still no new phones" this year are killing them.
They've made some really smart acquisitions over the past 18 months. They're debt
Re:No more (Score:4, Informative)
Disclaimer: I'm a RIM employee.
We're not worried. We pulled in $700mil in profit last quarter. The market somehow believes that we're going out of business as a result. Our market cap is now less than our annual revenue. What kind of sense does that make?
Sure the product needs some work. If you think we're sitting idly on our hands, your wrong. But we're not exactly losing money, and we're a company with no debt and a $3B pile of cash. This stock market mess has made us an _amazing_ acquisition target, but we're nowhere near closing our doors.
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if youre not worried you should be. you could say the same for nokia and look what that turd is doing. and BTW what the fuck were you guys thinking with the playbook ? throw out your turd of an OS and put your stuff on android. you dont know how to code -- get over it.
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I'd be worried if I were you. RIM's market share is being eaten into like crazy by Apple and all the 'Droids. I know of two medium sized companies in the last nine months who have dropped Blackberries for iPhones. I think the tide has turned.
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um.. do you still have a job? I mean.. with layoffs and all.
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Woopdie do, you pulled in $700m in profit last quarter. Your competitors pulled in $6B and $2.3B (Apple and Google). They are eating your market share faster every day. Further, with increased pressure from IT managers to reduce infrastructure, your model of dedicated support hardware just doesn't make sense anymore. Keep fighting the good fight, but the market is reacting not to your current performance but to your future prospects.
You lost 5% of market share of new phone sale
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If you think we're sitting idly on our hands, your wrong
I didn't know Lazaridis had a
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As a RIM employee, you need to read this [blogspot.com] guy's thoughts on your company and its future. ("What's wrong with Blackberry...").
Now. No -- now as in right now.
Because right now, you're in a world of shit, regardless of what those balance statements are telling you.
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This really does need to be modded up - it's a long read, but fascinating and having seen something like that happen to another firm, it's probably largely correct.
To my mind, it also resonates with Windows Phone 7. Especially the bit about keeping the cattle happy - that immediately reminded me of the silence from MS about Silverlight's future.
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U.S. Government is a big buyer of Blackberries. See the recent article here on Slashdot about gov't gadgets for numbers. They're a big chunk of your profit. And as soon as the iPhone or Android gets FIPS certified you will lose most of your U.S. Government business overnight.
Right now, most of the people I know in gov't use Blackberries only because they're forced to. Not a week goes by where I don't have users asking me when they can use their iPhone, iPad or Android device and return the BB.
We're piloti
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Sure the product needs some work. If you think we're sitting idly on our hands, your wrong.
Well, sorry to say, but based on the current state of RIM's products it appears that they're being designed by PHB's with no clue what people actually want. I mean, seriously, wtf is up with the Playbook?
I don't doubt that RIM employs some great engineers. But when you see them putting out products that bear the hallmarks of PHB interference, it's hard to feel optimistic about the company's ability to put out good products any more - and thus, their future.
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Well, sorry to say, but based on the current state of RIM's products it appears that they're being designed by PHB's with no clue what people actually want. I mean, seriously, wtf is up with the Playbook?
Seriously, WTF is wrong with the PlayBook? Of all the tablets on the market, it's the only one I find attractive.
I know, "native email" -- which I don't care about even a little bit. As a BB user, I have neither the need nor the desire to have native email support on the tablet. Bridge gives me everything I want, with company-friendly security. Outside of that, and a buggy launch, it's a ridiculously good tablet.
Releasing an Android just doesn't make any sense to me -- they'd be "just another Android tab
Re:No more (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm a potential RIM customer.
Can you explain to me concisely, in a few sentences, why I should choose the products of your company over competitors - most notably, Apple? What would I gain by picking a Blackberry phone over iPhone, or (especially) a Playbook over iPad?
I'm also a developer, potentially targeting RIM platforms.
Can you explain to me concisely, why I should target your devices, and not, say, iOS or Android, for my next mobile application? If you rather suggest that I target them and Blackberry, then what is your portability story (other than "you have to write your app for our platform from scratch")?
The answers to those questions are what drives the perception of RIM as a failing company.
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Better call quality
I have no idea what you mean - i.e. how BB is special in that regard - but I haven't had any problems with call quality on a variety of phones (iPhone and a bunch of Android ones) over the last few years. It's "good enough", and I don't see what I'd gain from it being any better. So not a notable point.
physical keyboard
That's a subjective preference. I'll give you that it can be a big selling point for some. Fine, now what if we compare against Android - where there are a bunch of phones with physical keyboards, in various
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When is the last time you have used blackberry phone ?
2 minutes ago.
The blackberry is still far superior for Exchange email and calendaring than any Android or iPhone device that I've tried.
Several execs in my company tried to move to shiny new iPhones, but all of them came back to Blackberries. Well, some carry both a BB and iPhone.
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The blackberry is still far superior for Exchange email and calendaring than any Android or iPhone device that I've tried..
That's the problem. They're great at that and not much else. iPhones and Androids are good at email and good at a whole bunch of things. I guess the market for really hardcore email / Exchange integration isn't all that big.
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The blackberry is still far superior for Exchange email and calendaring than any Android or iPhone device that I've tried..
That's the problem. They're great at that and not much else. iPhones and Androids are good at email and good at a whole bunch of things. I guess the market for really hardcore email / Exchange integration isn't all that big.
Yeah, I agree, my BB is great at email, but not so great at just about anything else (except SSH). I carry an Android for personal use and rarely use my Blackberry outside of business hours.
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my BB is great at email, but not so great at just about anything else (except SSH)
Their strength is in communication/messaging. Email, sure, but messaging is so much more than that now (social networking, as one example). I won't go into detail, as you can very easily check that out on your own.
This is why BB is so popular with women and business users -- it's simply the best phone for communication. Add to that the astonishing battery life, and you've got a winner.
The Torch, while it still has excellent battery life, isn't nearly as good as their curve and bold line. Still, it's ridi
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That's funny, 2 minutes ago here, but I detest it. Hate it hate it hate it.
I find my google calendar on my HTC Desire much nicer.
Sure, the exchange stuff is great for work, but that's it.
If RIM goes bust, maybe they will take the damn thing away! \o/
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Most corporations don't want Google or any other outside company knowing the details of their internal operations including meetings and the subject of those meetings. That is why they use Blackberries, since the info is not held on RIM servers, but only on the corporation's servers. If I owned a company I would never allow employees to schedule meetings on Google Calendar. In fact, I would make that a firing offence. Company business is company busines
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You don't understand Blackberry. Companies do not use Blackberries the same way individual consumers who purchase service from a phone company use Blackberries. BTW the individual consumer model is also the way iPhones and Android phones work. The consumer model has no way of providing secure communication. The corporate model does.
Each company using Blackberries has a Blackberry server at their company that talks to their email servers. RIM doesn't have access to this data. The data is then encrypted and p
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OS/2 was superior to Windows of the time, Beta was superior to VHS, MCA was superior to ISA. All of those superior products died too.
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And very poor support for anything other than exchange...
I've used them at work, and not been terribly impressed... The requirement to run a separate proprietary server for blackberry, the need to use their own custom APNs, not being able to add more than one account, no support for imap/caldav/carddav/etc...
And email is their best feature, web browsing is pretty lousy, media support pretty poor, they are fairly mediocre voice handsets (especially with the tiny number keys for typing phone numbers)...
I pers
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no support for imap/caldav/carddav/etc...
We have dozens of them where I work... most of them are using IMAP to access Google Apps Enterprise accounts. At least half of them have other email accounts set up as well.
Perhaps you found them so restrictive because of the policies IT had in place. Because at least half the stuff you are complaining about they do in fact do.
As for the iphone vs bb... i have an iphone, and for me its the right device. But the bb keyboard is FAR better for composing anything of any
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As an iOS user, what is this 'true choice' you speak of, enlighten me.
Re:Lack of open software/hardware standards (Score:5, Funny)
What we need now is the creation of standardized and open handset form factors and open handset hardware which is also to a degree standardized.
The Android platform is a defacto hardware standard. This hardware really isn't that sophisticated -- ARM cores, common chipsets, Android can be made to run on an iPhone [pcworld.com] after all, there's really no barrier to a manufacturer, as long as they use ARM.
Android handset manufacturers have it a bit better with a common OS, but they still have to churn out a new device practically every few months to remain relevant. [...] Only problem with Apple is that they are only in it for themselves and do not like the idea of giving their users true choice.
"Churning out" a new device every few months is the way manufacturers provide "true choice." You can either buy the 4G phone with a kickstand and an undeleteable Blockbuster app, or a Sprint phone with a hardware keyboard and is locked to Eclair, or a slider with MOTOBLUR. And none of these ever get their software updated without an act of congress, thus justifying the next phone in the churn cycle. Behold consumer choice.
Apple succeeds at remaining relevant, as you say, probably because their product and platform maps to consumer demand very well, and their platform doesn't try to recreate the, uh, "dynamism and competition" of the Wintel PC market, circa 1995 (an era in the history of computing I would consider one big, abominable mistake). Of course Apple is "only in it for themselves," unlike the well-known altruists at Samsung and Google.
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Re:Lack of open software/hardware standards (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does everything have to be open? the "built it yourself" PC market is a niche for geeks. Most computers sold now are laptops which may as well be made by the person selling you the OS as they're not built to any generic standard internally. So why aren't people complaining about the laptop market not being "open"?
RIM isn't dying because they have a bad product, they are dying because they are a phone associated with business and consumers wanting a personal phone don't want a phone from a stuffy business orientated vendor.
RIM had one or two killer ideas, Push Email and Remote Wipe. Both are commonplace elsewhere now, although Push Email tends to be done differently on non-RIM devices due to their patent.
RIM released a tablet computer that has none of their strengths in corporate phones, no email, no 3G connectivity and the usability was criticised too, O2 in the UK refuse to sell it for that reason.
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RIM released a tablet computer that has none of their strengths in corporate phones, no email, no 3G connectivity and the usability was criticised too, O2 in the UK refuse to sell it for that reason.
Their strength in business isn't email, it's incredibly secure email (among other things). Personally, I thought the lack of native email was a great idea -- just link it to my already-secure and managed phone. No need to manage another device. You can share devices between team-members and each one gets instant access to their data, and their data alone.
It seemed like a smart and sensible decision to me. Who knew the tech-press would stomp all over it?
On the 3G issues. Who needs 3G when you can just use y
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Or, sorry to beat around the bush, but, I think it's arguable that it's simply not possible to offer cellphone handsets on a generic hardware platform, with PC hardware competition, diversity and profit margins, and a 2nd-party OS that is written and steered by its own agendas (open or otherwise), while at the same time making a phone that actually addresses people's wants and needs as well as something that just comes, complete and full integrated, of a vertical assembly line. This certainly seems to be t
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The "enterprise" market is a boring one... You get boring, corporate-grey products... And your company will get a reputation for providing boring products that are only used at work. Devices will always be old, and have be several years behind in features.
The margins won't be great either, companies refresh their hardware slowly and will always look to save money.
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RIM is still one of the best choices in the enterprise world and it'll be a while before that ever changes.
Or one more Blackberry outage (this week) oughta do the trick.
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It's worth noting that companies like VMware are working on virtualization [engadget.com] technology for Android. This would allow handsets to switch between work and home OS images, allowing consumer handsets to be used during work time as secure corporate handsets.
It's possible this could become attractive to the enterprise... no BES, and you can repurpose equipment the employee already owns.
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Companies that did a 360 on their products and did OK:
Motorola
Are you trying to quote Tony Vivaldi? http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0010514/ [imdb.com]
I think you mean that they did a 180. Doing a 360 would put you back in the same direction as if you stood still.