An Inside Look At the Rise and Fall of RIM

zacharye writes with this excerpt from BGR: "Research In Motion is in the midst of a major transition in every sense of the word. Publicly, the company is portraying a very defensive image — one that is very dismissive, as if RIM is profitable and class-leading, and the media is out of line to criticize its business, as are investors. Internally, however, there's a different story to be told. It's a story filled with attitude, cockiness, heated arguments among the executive team and Co-CEOs, and paranoia. ... The three-year roadmap for RIM products focused on refining the technology in phones had already been released, rather than looking at where to add major new componentry or trying to identify or even shape future trends. 'One of the main reasons RIM missed the mark with the browser was because they were always proud of how little data usage a user would use,' a former executive said. 'There was no three-year plan at RIM.'"

Re:Arrogance rarely wins...

[spire3661]

ITs fair to say that Steve has earned his arrogance. Founded PC company, was ousted, invents a computer that the WEB WAS INVENTED ON. Comes back to company he founded with the design THE WEB WAS INVENTED ON, said design becomes a decade long OS foundation for the company. He BOUGHT WALT Disney Inc, with a studio he paid a pittance for from Lucas. Itunes, ipod, Ipad all complete revolutions in the marketplace. But yeah, he doesnt deserve his arrogance.

Re:Use the Droid platform

[sarhjinian]

I don't think so. Have you actually looked at the new system they have for the Playbook? It is really nice. Screens scroll smoothly. It is simple and straightforward. From a developer standpoint, you have the option of writing in Flash, or in native C++, or in Blackberry Java, or in Android Java.

Yes, but your users don't have the option of running any of that because RIM hasn't released any of those environments, nor have they provided any hint as to when they might.

I have a PlayBook. It's pretty slick at it's core, but when it has next to no apps, can't do autocorrect, has all sorts of bizarre interface inconsistencies and stalls mysteriously when browsing the web (no, not because of Flash, which is a non-feature, IMO). This article is dead-bang-on in it's analysis of RIM's problems lying with Laziridis' engineering-induced blindness, and the PlayBook is an example of that mindset: hits all the features, has an amazing foundation but is hideously crippled in ways that matter to average people.

When people talk up the PlayBook, it's always "It runs Flash" (yes, it does; it does so better than any other tablet, which is like the old "winning a race at the special olympics" joke) or "It multitasks" (yes, it does, but you're challenged to find more than four apps worth running, and even then the memory management will fall down). That you can't type on it, that it's impossble to mark text, that it has no email client (and Bridge is a glitchy bastard) tell you everything you need to know about how RIM and it's people don't think about what actual consumers want.

It kills me, really. I love the form factor---I wish there was a 7" iPad---and the gestures are brilliant (even though they're not consistent across all apps), but RIM needs to fix this think fast. The problem is that I think they've already moved onto the OS7 phones, which in turn are evolutionary dead ends because a few months after that there's supposed to be QNX phones. I suppose, in a year, the PlayBook might be usable. Maybe.

It reeks of Nokia, actually.

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