No longer in motion.
July 16, 2011 5:01 PM Subscribe
Inside RIM: An exclusive look at the rise and fall of the company that made smartphones smart. '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.'
'Let’s rewind a few years. Picture yourself sitting in an executive briefing at Research In Motion. You’d hear Mike Lazaridis unequivocally state time and time again that BlackBerry smartphones would never have MP3 players or cameras in them because it just does not make sense when the company’s primary customers were the government and enterprise. “BlackBerry smartphones will never have cameras because the No. 1 customer of ours is the U.S. government,” Mike Lazaridis would say in meetings. “There will never be a BlackBerry with an MP3 player or camera.”'
'The fact is, that RIM didn’t only miss the boat in terms of product features and device trends as we now know, but the underpinnings of the company’s consumer failure began all the way back in 2005 with bold statements like these, combined with a lack of research and development in numerous key areas.
Mike Lazaridis would say that the most ridiculous idea was to name a phone with a marketing-derived name, like the Motorola RAZR. “BlackBerry will never do that, it will always be a model number,” he said to executives. “A BlackBerry with a name is ridiculous.”
“Here we are, as young, brazen people, and we’re just like, ‘Mike, you’re missing out. There’s a trend here; it’s a social and collaborative scene in certain media circles’,” one former executive said, describing the general feeling among other executives at the company. “Now look at what’s happened 4 or 5 years later — an MP3 player, camera, name, all done reluctantly.”'
'Let’s rewind a few years. Picture yourself sitting in an executive briefing at Research In Motion. You’d hear Mike Lazaridis unequivocally state time and time again that BlackBerry smartphones would never have MP3 players or cameras in them because it just does not make sense when the company’s primary customers were the government and enterprise. “BlackBerry smartphones will never have cameras because the No. 1 customer of ours is the U.S. government,” Mike Lazaridis would say in meetings. “There will never be a BlackBerry with an MP3 player or camera.”'
'The fact is, that RIM didn’t only miss the boat in terms of product features and device trends as we now know, but the underpinnings of the company’s consumer failure began all the way back in 2005 with bold statements like these, combined with a lack of research and development in numerous key areas.
Mike Lazaridis would say that the most ridiculous idea was to name a phone with a marketing-derived name, like the Motorola RAZR. “BlackBerry will never do that, it will always be a model number,” he said to executives. “A BlackBerry with a name is ridiculous.”
“Here we are, as young, brazen people, and we’re just like, ‘Mike, you’re missing out. There’s a trend here; it’s a social and collaborative scene in certain media circles’,” one former executive said, describing the general feeling among other executives at the company. “Now look at what’s happened 4 or 5 years later — an MP3 player, camera, name, all done reluctantly.”'
BlackBerry smartphones will never have cameras because the No. 1 customer of ours is the U.S. government
Isn't this the classic "innovator's dilemma?"
That said, I do know sysadmins guys with esoteric smartphones that intentionally don't have a camera to comply with datacenter policy, and a CIO who's fairly annoyed with app store accounts that can't tie expenses and property to the organization instead of the person.
posted by pwnguin at 5:33 PM on July 16, 2011 [1 favorite]
Isn't this the classic "innovator's dilemma?"
That said, I do know sysadmins guys with esoteric smartphones that intentionally don't have a camera to comply with datacenter policy, and a CIO who's fairly annoyed with app store accounts that can't tie expenses and property to the organization instead of the person.
posted by pwnguin at 5:33 PM on July 16, 2011 [1 favorite]
Isn't this the classic "innovator's dilemma?"
No, it's just shortsightedness. It's not like companies are only allowed to make one kind of device.
posted by mhoye at 5:38 PM on July 16, 2011
No, it's just shortsightedness. It's not like companies are only allowed to make one kind of device.
posted by mhoye at 5:38 PM on July 16, 2011
It's not like companies are only allowed to make one kind of device.
But they did get beat by a company that chose to just make one device.
posted by snofoam at 5:40 PM on July 16, 2011 [6 favorites]
But they did get beat by a company that chose to just make one device.
posted by snofoam at 5:40 PM on July 16, 2011 [6 favorites]
While RIM has always viewed carriers as customers rather than end users, carriers have long been trying to find a different partner that doesn’t charge network fees. Since all BlackBerry devices use the BlackBerry NOC, RIM gets a piece of the data plan users pay on their bills each month. And RIM is the only manufacturer whose products are configured in such a way. “Carriers have always tried to negotiate the fees they pay RIM. They try everything to get that dropped or lowered, but that has been the one holy grail of RIM that has not been touched."
This pretty much sums it up for me. RIM is making inherently personal products: devices that its users are going to carry in their pockets and purses all day and every day. If you're going to have that much of a role in people's lives and not treat their experience and needs as sacrosanct, you're screwed. Forcing everyone's data to come through the BlackBerry NOC made sense back in the two-way pager days, but that just doesn't add any value anymore, poses major security concerns, and is of no help to the enterprise, which has data centers and mail servers already. It's as if all my calls from my Nokia have to be routed through Helsinki and my carrier has to pay them every money for the privilege. That's not a feature.
RIM's utter failure to anticipate the demand for a usable web browser was the biggest failure though. To not see the web as a priority as late as 2006 was incredibly short-sided.
posted by zachlipton at 5:45 PM on July 16, 2011 [15 favorites]
This pretty much sums it up for me. RIM is making inherently personal products: devices that its users are going to carry in their pockets and purses all day and every day. If you're going to have that much of a role in people's lives and not treat their experience and needs as sacrosanct, you're screwed. Forcing everyone's data to come through the BlackBerry NOC made sense back in the two-way pager days, but that just doesn't add any value anymore, poses major security concerns, and is of no help to the enterprise, which has data centers and mail servers already. It's as if all my calls from my Nokia have to be routed through Helsinki and my carrier has to pay them every money for the privilege. That's not a feature.
RIM's utter failure to anticipate the demand for a usable web browser was the biggest failure though. To not see the web as a priority as late as 2006 was incredibly short-sided.
posted by zachlipton at 5:45 PM on July 16, 2011 [15 favorites]
Blackberrys are just stuck with the image of being a phone that you're issued, not one that you'd buy on your own. Even if they managed to come up with one that could equal the features of an Android or iOS phone, they'd still have that image of mostly being a tether to your office and not something you'd want.
posted by octothorpe at 5:54 PM on July 16, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by octothorpe at 5:54 PM on July 16, 2011 [1 favorite]
Hell then there's the whole Web OS debacle. Palm phones seem to be on their way to extinction and they're light years ahead of RIM in terms of modern smart phone personal use awesomeness. My feeling is that HP/Palm can never recover from its nonexistent app store. They're gapped out of the market.
Could one write a non iOS that could run iOS apps, make it very easy for the developers to shift their applications over?
posted by Chekhovian at 6:04 PM on July 16, 2011
Could one write a non iOS that could run iOS apps, make it very easy for the developers to shift their applications over?
posted by Chekhovian at 6:04 PM on July 16, 2011
I bought my 9780 on my own. I wanted the best keyboard I could find and the rest of the experience is actually pretty good, though I was trading up from S60 (Nokia N97 mini). I've tried blogging using wordpress for my ipod touch and just can't get anything done with a virtual keyboard- hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate hate it.
Anyway the camera on my 9780 is a delight, one of the happiest surprises I could have hoped for. Facebook integration (with the beta zone version) is superb and I prefer this version of facebook to any other mobile one I've tried. Dedicated twitter app is excellent. New (alpha) version of 4square has finally caught up with iOS/Android, almost. And I get this excellent keyboard, the best push email I could have hoped for ans as I say an absolutely excellent camera.
Cannot wait for the Bold Touch. Cannot fucking wait.
posted by ethnomethodologist at 6:08 PM on July 16, 2011 [2 favorites]
Anyway the camera on my 9780 is a delight, one of the happiest surprises I could have hoped for. Facebook integration (with the beta zone version) is superb and I prefer this version of facebook to any other mobile one I've tried. Dedicated twitter app is excellent. New (alpha) version of 4square has finally caught up with iOS/Android, almost. And I get this excellent keyboard, the best push email I could have hoped for ans as I say an absolutely excellent camera.
Cannot wait for the Bold Touch. Cannot fucking wait.
posted by ethnomethodologist at 6:08 PM on July 16, 2011 [2 favorites]
> the best push email I could have hoped for
There's more to push email than, you know, just having the email show up everywhere it is supposed to? Is this really that hard a technology?
posted by introp at 6:10 PM on July 16, 2011 [1 favorite]
There's more to push email than, you know, just having the email show up everywhere it is supposed to? Is this really that hard a technology?
posted by introp at 6:10 PM on July 16, 2011 [1 favorite]
I feel sorry for all the people getting laid off.
Worst RIM job ever!
posted by markkraft at 6:11 PM on July 16, 2011 [4 favorites]
Worst RIM job ever!
posted by markkraft at 6:11 PM on July 16, 2011 [4 favorites]
BlackBerry smartphones will never have cameras because the No. 1 customer of ours is the U.S. government
Extreme short-sightedness, considering that the most rapidly expanding part of the government work force is Homeland Security spies.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:11 PM on July 16, 2011 [2 favorites]
Extreme short-sightedness, considering that the most rapidly expanding part of the government work force is Homeland Security spies.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:11 PM on July 16, 2011 [2 favorites]
Oh, and I worked in the cell-network testing business for about a decade; RIM was always the most colossal pain in the ass to deal with for both the carrier and the equipment vendors. "We need to be able to send emails from your device in an automated fashion, so we can do large-scale testing." "Sorry, that's not possible." "Okay, let's talk about how we can address tha... hello?" and you hear a dialtone.
posted by introp at 6:13 PM on July 16, 2011
posted by introp at 6:13 PM on July 16, 2011
Forcing everyone's data to come through the BlackBerry NOC made sense back in the two-way pager days, but that just doesn't add any value anymore, poses major security concerns, and is of no help to the enterprise, which has data centers and mail servers already. It's as if all my calls from my Nokia have to be routed through Helsinki and my carrier has to pay them every money for the privilege. That's not a feature.
It's a feature to me. All my shit is automatically backed up by the Blackberry cloud. (And calls don't route through RIM's datacenters, just (some of?) the data.) I don't want to be entering passwords into my phone to get email. BIS deals with that.
The web browser is a problem. It was a decent paradigm when it was conceived of, but hasn't changed much with time.
But I love my Bold, and am hankering for the next one to appear. The shit just works, and I appreciate what appears to be a deliberate attempt to really, really think about UI and the needs of users who don't want a toy. Things like customizable autotext, being able to cut and paste, calling phone numbers from inside email messages. Some of those are standard now, but they had it a long time ago. (But it also HAS toys- it was the first phone I ever saw that could play youtube videos.)
I'm with the Mike guy: I want my phone maker to obsess about battery life, the speakerphone and other piddly little things that drive users crazy on a DAILY basis. I just wish the marketplace would see the value in this.
posted by gjc at 6:16 PM on July 16, 2011 [5 favorites]
It's a feature to me. All my shit is automatically backed up by the Blackberry cloud. (And calls don't route through RIM's datacenters, just (some of?) the data.) I don't want to be entering passwords into my phone to get email. BIS deals with that.
The web browser is a problem. It was a decent paradigm when it was conceived of, but hasn't changed much with time.
But I love my Bold, and am hankering for the next one to appear. The shit just works, and I appreciate what appears to be a deliberate attempt to really, really think about UI and the needs of users who don't want a toy. Things like customizable autotext, being able to cut and paste, calling phone numbers from inside email messages. Some of those are standard now, but they had it a long time ago. (But it also HAS toys- it was the first phone I ever saw that could play youtube videos.)
I'm with the Mike guy: I want my phone maker to obsess about battery life, the speakerphone and other piddly little things that drive users crazy on a DAILY basis. I just wish the marketplace would see the value in this.
posted by gjc at 6:16 PM on July 16, 2011 [5 favorites]
I scoffed at the iPhone. My Blackberry had a better camera, played mp3s, voice dialing, a2dp bouetooth headphone support and ran apps and you didn't need an app store. The web browser was the problem. Once I played with the iPhone for a bit, and saw what was possible, it was over. Pretty soon I had both devices. Even though I still think Blackberry has better email, calendar and dialing support it didn't stop me form eventually switching over.
posted by humanfont at 6:19 PM on July 16, 2011 [2 favorites]
posted by humanfont at 6:19 PM on July 16, 2011 [2 favorites]
And contrast the approach of RIM here to Apple's strategy: they subsidize the companies that will manufacture their parts to build the new factories that will use the new techniques they need to produce the new state of the art components their phones will need in return for a period of exclusivity and eventual long term discounts.
That's fucking long term planning.
posted by Chekhovian at 6:32 PM on July 16, 2011 [3 favorites]
That's fucking long term planning.
posted by Chekhovian at 6:32 PM on July 16, 2011 [3 favorites]
I was in Japan in 2005. Over there, they had just come out with phones with cameras. There were TV commercials all the time, of people sending images and streaming video to each other. Now, they had phones that not only had voice, but email, and static and streaming video.
I got back to North America. RIM had then just announced a brand new Blackberry - with a voice phone built in!! And this was touted as revolutionary.
I shook my head in amazement - they were YEARS behind the state of the art! Their competitors had products that did the same thing as RIM (email, and voice) and video/photo too!
At that point - in 2005 like it notes in the OP - my opinion of RIM's future took a big dive. I viewed it, and continued to view it, like a company that has no real reason to exist - it's competitors (Iphone? Android? Any plain old Samsung cellphone?) offer products that are the same if not more advanced than theirs. RIM's products may have been unique 10 years ago, but not anymore.
posted by thermonuclear.jive.turkey at 6:37 PM on July 16, 2011
I got back to North America. RIM had then just announced a brand new Blackberry - with a voice phone built in!! And this was touted as revolutionary.
I shook my head in amazement - they were YEARS behind the state of the art! Their competitors had products that did the same thing as RIM (email, and voice) and video/photo too!
At that point - in 2005 like it notes in the OP - my opinion of RIM's future took a big dive. I viewed it, and continued to view it, like a company that has no real reason to exist - it's competitors (Iphone? Android? Any plain old Samsung cellphone?) offer products that are the same if not more advanced than theirs. RIM's products may have been unique 10 years ago, but not anymore.
posted by thermonuclear.jive.turkey at 6:37 PM on July 16, 2011
I was in Japan in 2005. Over there, they had just come out with phones with cameras. There were TV commercials all the time, of people sending images and streaming video to each other. Now, they had phones that not only had voice, but email, and static and streaming video.
Wait? What? My phone in Japan in 2000 had a camera, as well as internet access (NTT DoCoMo i-mode). There were some cameras at that time (11 years ago) that could stream video.
MeFite armage is a better person to talk to about this, but Japan rolled out a 3G network at least ten years before North America.
posted by KokuRyu at 7:05 PM on July 16, 2011 [1 favorite]
Wait? What? My phone in Japan in 2000 had a camera, as well as internet access (NTT DoCoMo i-mode). There were some cameras at that time (11 years ago) that could stream video.
MeFite armage is a better person to talk to about this, but Japan rolled out a 3G network at least ten years before North America.
posted by KokuRyu at 7:05 PM on July 16, 2011 [1 favorite]
RIM has problems to solve, that's for sure. But I feel like a lot of the hate out there is trend/fashion based: Blackberry is no longer the 'cool thing' and, in consumer culture, that's the kiss of death.
posted by PretentiousAsHell at 7:08 PM on July 16, 2011
posted by PretentiousAsHell at 7:08 PM on July 16, 2011
There were some cameras at that time (11 years ago) that could stream video.
There were somecameras phones at that time (11 years ago) that could stream video.
posted by KokuRyu at 7:09 PM on July 16, 2011
There were some
posted by KokuRyu at 7:09 PM on July 16, 2011
Research in Motion has been suffering from bad execution of good ideas lately.
They came up with a netbook computer even before the term existed, but it was underpowered and tied to the Blackberry. Reporters, who typically have to carry around full powered laptops regardless, didn't understand the market and so the whole concept got pilloried in the press. As a result, it was dropped before it even came out--dropped into a black whole so deep that I can't even find mention of it on Google. Later, other companies did it right, and people began buying them despite the bad press. Netbooks are used mainly as convenient way to carry something that can surf the web, and so tablets are really just the next step for this type of product.
The Playbook came out missing key features, which guaranteed a dismal launch. On the plus side hey own QNX (sounds like UNIX), a fast, multitasking embedded operating system that's been out since before the 1980s. QNX makes the Playbook fast and multi-tasking. I've heard that it will run Android apps. There's at least one analyst that thinks it will do well in international markets
posted by eye of newt at 7:22 PM on July 16, 2011
They came up with a netbook computer even before the term existed, but it was underpowered and tied to the Blackberry. Reporters, who typically have to carry around full powered laptops regardless, didn't understand the market and so the whole concept got pilloried in the press. As a result, it was dropped before it even came out--dropped into a black whole so deep that I can't even find mention of it on Google. Later, other companies did it right, and people began buying them despite the bad press. Netbooks are used mainly as convenient way to carry something that can surf the web, and so tablets are really just the next step for this type of product.
The Playbook came out missing key features, which guaranteed a dismal launch. On the plus side hey own QNX (sounds like UNIX), a fast, multitasking embedded operating system that's been out since before the 1980s. QNX makes the Playbook fast and multi-tasking. I've heard that it will run Android apps. There's at least one analyst that thinks it will do well in international markets
posted by eye of newt at 7:22 PM on July 16, 2011
The camera phone, by the way, was invented by Philippe Kahn in 1997 (yes, the founder of Borland), as a way to get pictures of his newborn daughter to relatives. He licensed it to Japanese phone manufacturers who came out with it soon afterwards.
posted by eye of newt at 7:26 PM on July 16, 2011 [4 favorites]
posted by eye of newt at 7:26 PM on July 16, 2011 [4 favorites]
thermonuclear.jive.turkey: What do you mean, a Blackberry with a voice phone built in was revolutionary? Isn't that the most fundamental feature of a phone?
posted by chmmr at 7:34 PM on July 16, 2011
posted by chmmr at 7:34 PM on July 16, 2011
eye of newt: i can't find anything either. That wasn't the Palm Foleo you're thinking of?
posted by dumbland at 7:36 PM on July 16, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by dumbland at 7:36 PM on July 16, 2011 [1 favorite]
I was recently issued a storm 2. Worst phone I've ever had, relative to what the market offers. Everyone at work carries two phones everywhere- the company blackberry, and the iphone or android that you actually use.
posted by jenkinsEar at 7:53 PM on July 16, 2011
posted by jenkinsEar at 7:53 PM on July 16, 2011
thermonuclear.jive.turkey: What do you mean, a Blackberry with a voice phone built in was revolutionary? Isn't that the most fundamental feature of a phone?
The original BlackBerry devices weren't phones at all. RIM was a pager company, and their devices used the pager network. This was quite reliable, but it strictly limited what they could do, because the pager network is optimized around reliable one-way delivery of short messages, instead of TCP/IP communication. Around 2002, they realized this was becoming unsustainable (people don't want to carry a BlackBerry and a cell phone, who would have thought?), and switched to products that used the 2G cellular network. The early models were phones, but they didn't even have microphones/speakers built-in; you had to use them with a headset. It wasn't until the BlackBerry 6210 of 2003 that they were selling a device that could actually make calls and get your email without a headset.
This was around the same time that US consumers could cheaply buy the Danger Hiptop (T-Mobile Sidekick), which launched in 2002, fit in your pocket, had a color screen by early 2003, a full web browser that could view real HTML pages (miles away from the iPhone browser, but by far the best anyone had on a mobile device). They even made the SDK freely available online, and had an app store on the devices circa 2003 or so. And all this was incredibly old tech by Japanese standards...
posted by zachlipton at 7:57 PM on July 16, 2011 [2 favorites]
The original BlackBerry devices weren't phones at all. RIM was a pager company, and their devices used the pager network. This was quite reliable, but it strictly limited what they could do, because the pager network is optimized around reliable one-way delivery of short messages, instead of TCP/IP communication. Around 2002, they realized this was becoming unsustainable (people don't want to carry a BlackBerry and a cell phone, who would have thought?), and switched to products that used the 2G cellular network. The early models were phones, but they didn't even have microphones/speakers built-in; you had to use them with a headset. It wasn't until the BlackBerry 6210 of 2003 that they were selling a device that could actually make calls and get your email without a headset.
This was around the same time that US consumers could cheaply buy the Danger Hiptop (T-Mobile Sidekick), which launched in 2002, fit in your pocket, had a color screen by early 2003, a full web browser that could view real HTML pages (miles away from the iPhone browser, but by far the best anyone had on a mobile device). They even made the SDK freely available online, and had an app store on the devices circa 2003 or so. And all this was incredibly old tech by Japanese standards...
posted by zachlipton at 7:57 PM on July 16, 2011 [2 favorites]
Is RIM is so desperate that it looks like they hired PR people to hype their product in the comments of this critical Guardian review?
posted by fuq at 8:22 PM on July 16, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by fuq at 8:22 PM on July 16, 2011 [1 favorite]
Hey RIM guys! If you keep making JUST PHONES, you're doomed! There are many very large, very diverse companies who are willing to lose hundreds of millions of dollars just to run you into the ground.
Other companies make GREAT smartphone hardware, at basically zero margins. Other companies make GREAT smartphone OSes, and some of them actually give away the product completely free! You can't compete with that.
But what the world needs is good smartphone software. Good smartphone WORK software. I should be able to log on to my work PC, download the document I'm working on, and edit it on my personal phone. You're the only smartphone OS company that already has your server software running in my company's data center, so you're uniquely positioned to let me access work files on my phone. And your software should work on iOS, Android, Windows Phone, whatever, because they're going to be in a neck-and-neck race for the next decade or so.
Oh, and one more thing. Stop bragging about QNX. Yes, I get that it's a stable OS kernel...but so's Linux, and so's WinCE, and so's the Darwin thingy in the middle of iOS. And the systems programmers you got from QNX aren't going to be great at making a usable phone UI. It's kind of like GM issuing a press release that YES, we finally got working engines! Except they'd never do that, because it's completely frigging obvious.
posted by miyabo at 9:41 PM on July 16, 2011 [4 favorites]
Other companies make GREAT smartphone hardware, at basically zero margins. Other companies make GREAT smartphone OSes, and some of them actually give away the product completely free! You can't compete with that.
But what the world needs is good smartphone software. Good smartphone WORK software. I should be able to log on to my work PC, download the document I'm working on, and edit it on my personal phone. You're the only smartphone OS company that already has your server software running in my company's data center, so you're uniquely positioned to let me access work files on my phone. And your software should work on iOS, Android, Windows Phone, whatever, because they're going to be in a neck-and-neck race for the next decade or so.
Oh, and one more thing. Stop bragging about QNX. Yes, I get that it's a stable OS kernel...but so's Linux, and so's WinCE, and so's the Darwin thingy in the middle of iOS. And the systems programmers you got from QNX aren't going to be great at making a usable phone UI. It's kind of like GM issuing a press release that YES, we finally got working engines! Except they'd never do that, because it's completely frigging obvious.
posted by miyabo at 9:41 PM on July 16, 2011 [4 favorites]
zachlipton wrote: Forcing everyone's data to come through the BlackBerry NOC made sense back in the two-way pager days, but that just doesn't add any value anymore, poses major security concerns, and is of no help to the enterprise, which has data centers and mail servers already.
Actually, it's of great help to the enterprise, as it allows the phone to be managed exactly the same way and work the same way on every carrier in the entire world. It doesn't matter if you have three guys in Tuvalu all of a sudden. They get Blackberry plans from the local carrier and it just works.
Not only that, but remote provisioning is so simple any idiot can do it.
I've never carried a BB because, being technical, I can save myself money by using a dumbphone data plan with other smartphones. It would literally double the cost of my data plan to use a Blackberry. That said, I actually like their new stuff. The touch interface they rolled out in OS6 is light years ahead of what they did with OS5. I very much like that it's usable both by touching and by scrolling with the fake trackball. Unfortunately, with the Torch they pulled a Nokia and used relatively old hardware.
It still performs OK, but it could be better. The Torch 2 looks like it'll be better in that respect, although still behind the times.
And miyabo, they seemed to say a couple weeks back that they were going to start doing BB Connect again, only this time on all the platforms, not just Symbian.
posted by wierdo at 10:01 PM on July 16, 2011 [1 favorite]
Actually, it's of great help to the enterprise, as it allows the phone to be managed exactly the same way and work the same way on every carrier in the entire world. It doesn't matter if you have three guys in Tuvalu all of a sudden. They get Blackberry plans from the local carrier and it just works.
Not only that, but remote provisioning is so simple any idiot can do it.
I've never carried a BB because, being technical, I can save myself money by using a dumbphone data plan with other smartphones. It would literally double the cost of my data plan to use a Blackberry. That said, I actually like their new stuff. The touch interface they rolled out in OS6 is light years ahead of what they did with OS5. I very much like that it's usable both by touching and by scrolling with the fake trackball. Unfortunately, with the Torch they pulled a Nokia and used relatively old hardware.
It still performs OK, but it could be better. The Torch 2 looks like it'll be better in that respect, although still behind the times.
And miyabo, they seemed to say a couple weeks back that they were going to start doing BB Connect again, only this time on all the platforms, not just Symbian.
posted by wierdo at 10:01 PM on July 16, 2011 [1 favorite]
One other thing I failed to mention: It's really annoying how people say that RIM is dying or Nokia is dying because they're losing market share. The smartphone market is growing so fast that it doesn't actually matter in any way except perception. Symbian, for example, lost almost 10% market share between 2009 and 2010, yet sales were up 30 million units. RIM's market share dropped almost 4%, but their unit sales also grew by 13 million.
Between 2009 and 2010, the overall smartphone market grew from a little over 173 million devices to just shy of 300 million devices. There's plenty of room for everyone except in the minds of analysts and people too busy being on somebody's team to look at the whole market.
Android is starting to take over on the low end, though. Too bad, as Symbian could have done very well in that segment had their new CEO not made such an enormous blunder with his burning platform memo. (it may or may not have been true, but saying it out loud kills future sales) Now they're stuck trying to turn S40 into a smartphone platform if they want to go where the real sales volume is.
posted by wierdo at 10:13 PM on July 16, 2011 [5 favorites]
Between 2009 and 2010, the overall smartphone market grew from a little over 173 million devices to just shy of 300 million devices. There's plenty of room for everyone except in the minds of analysts and people too busy being on somebody's team to look at the whole market.
Android is starting to take over on the low end, though. Too bad, as Symbian could have done very well in that segment had their new CEO not made such an enormous blunder with his burning platform memo. (it may or may not have been true, but saying it out loud kills future sales) Now they're stuck trying to turn S40 into a smartphone platform if they want to go where the real sales volume is.
posted by wierdo at 10:13 PM on July 16, 2011 [5 favorites]
Actually, it's of great help to the enterprise, as it allows the phone to be managed exactly the same way and work the same way on every carrier in the entire world. It doesn't matter if you have three guys in Tuvalu all of a sudden. They get Blackberry plans from the local carrier and it just works.
As opposed to just having the phones connect to your Exchange or IMAP server directly? Could be a headache if you're using Domino or something, but a huge number of people get their email just fine with iPhones and Android devices, and nobody is paying Google or Apple to push these bits around for them.
With BlackBerry Enterprise Server, a business needs to buy into RIM's promise and configure a custom solution to support a broad BlackBerry roll-out. Meanwhile, a random employee can show up with his iPhone, type in his Exchange username and password, and have push email show up alongside his personal Gmail a minute later. The carriers have nothing to do with it.
BES is not an inherently terrible thing, but the whole idea of the internet is that you don't have a grand central server somewhere that's responsible for everything. (Ok, the DNS root nameservers are a bit like that, but that's not the point...) Why should all my email pass through RIM?
posted by zachlipton at 10:25 PM on July 16, 2011 [2 favorites]
As opposed to just having the phones connect to your Exchange or IMAP server directly? Could be a headache if you're using Domino or something, but a huge number of people get their email just fine with iPhones and Android devices, and nobody is paying Google or Apple to push these bits around for them.
With BlackBerry Enterprise Server, a business needs to buy into RIM's promise and configure a custom solution to support a broad BlackBerry roll-out. Meanwhile, a random employee can show up with his iPhone, type in his Exchange username and password, and have push email show up alongside his personal Gmail a minute later. The carriers have nothing to do with it.
BES is not an inherently terrible thing, but the whole idea of the internet is that you don't have a grand central server somewhere that's responsible for everything. (Ok, the DNS root nameservers are a bit like that, but that's not the point...) Why should all my email pass through RIM?
posted by zachlipton at 10:25 PM on July 16, 2011 [2 favorites]
I work for a bigger company you've heard of, and we've actually removed Blackberries as a supported mobile device. We're all iPhones and Android now. As someone who's had to setup a mobile email/calendar/etc. platform from scratch, I find it amazing that anyone could even consider Blackberries any more.
posted by sideshow at 10:35 PM on July 16, 2011 [2 favorites]
posted by sideshow at 10:35 PM on July 16, 2011 [2 favorites]
Having made the switch to Android from Blackberry (I lost my BB when I got laid off from my govt job), I have to say that Blackberry's contacts manager works waaaaaaaay better. It's easy to save contacts, adjust contacts, create new contacts, phone them, save phone numbers... So very nice.
I do not, however, miss BB's craptastic web browser/
posted by KokuRyu at 11:30 PM on July 16, 2011
I do not, however, miss BB's craptastic web browser/
posted by KokuRyu at 11:30 PM on July 16, 2011
I'm with the Mike guy: I want my phone maker to obsess about battery life, the speakerphone and other piddly little things that drive users crazy on a DAILY basis. I just wish the marketplace would see the value in this.
The market has unequivocally sounded out in unison. Once it's "good enough" they don't give a flying fuck. Because really when it comes down to it if I have to pick an iPhone with a butter smooth interface with excellent responsiveness and some shitty ass phone that works for a month off a single charge I'll pick the iPhone because I'll just plug the damn thing whenever I'm near power anyway. At work? Power socket. On the road? Car charger. On a plane? I have a $50 battery that I plug the iPhone into if it's a flight that lasts more than 8 hours and more and more planes just have USB ports anyway.
For 99% of people, 99% of the time battery life is irrelevant after you can get over the "one day of useful work" mark.
posted by Talez at 11:49 PM on July 16, 2011 [1 favorite]
The market has unequivocally sounded out in unison. Once it's "good enough" they don't give a flying fuck. Because really when it comes down to it if I have to pick an iPhone with a butter smooth interface with excellent responsiveness and some shitty ass phone that works for a month off a single charge I'll pick the iPhone because I'll just plug the damn thing whenever I'm near power anyway. At work? Power socket. On the road? Car charger. On a plane? I have a $50 battery that I plug the iPhone into if it's a flight that lasts more than 8 hours and more and more planes just have USB ports anyway.
For 99% of people, 99% of the time battery life is irrelevant after you can get over the "one day of useful work" mark.
posted by Talez at 11:49 PM on July 16, 2011 [1 favorite]
RIM succeeded when they had the rep pf the crackberry, the phone people were addicted to because of constant interaction. As soon as people had reasons to use a phone constantly for reasons other than work email or interaction with corporate friends, they were sunk. Corporate crack doesn't sell when everyone's social life works as well or better on the competition.
posted by mikeh at 12:16 AM on July 17, 2011
posted by mikeh at 12:16 AM on July 17, 2011
Could one write a non iOS that could run iOS apps, make it very easy for the developers to shift their applications over?
Yes and no. Technically, there's no reason why this couldn't be done, though Apple's secrecy would make this quite a challenge to create a clone OS.
The better place to address this is on the dev kit level, by allowing for compilation for multiple platforms like iOS and Android. Fewer legal barriers and logistical ones too. I suspect that it's as easy as it will ever be to develop for multiple mobile OS'es.
posted by ZeusHumms at 1:04 AM on July 17, 2011
Yes and no. Technically, there's no reason why this couldn't be done, though Apple's secrecy would make this quite a challenge to create a clone OS.
The better place to address this is on the dev kit level, by allowing for compilation for multiple platforms like iOS and Android. Fewer legal barriers and logistical ones too. I suspect that it's as easy as it will ever be to develop for multiple mobile OS'es.
posted by ZeusHumms at 1:04 AM on July 17, 2011
I implore everyone with smart-phone ideas and experience to read the linked article. It is more incisive than most on RIM.
While I didn't create a sock-puppet to be a cheerleader, and agree with much of the insight from this article (eg: “RIM is a reactionary company.”), it does have a history of quality engineering. They knew how many text messages they were getting from a AA battery, and continued to obsess over battery life like no others (pitfall: 3rd party apps can fucking kill your BB, but a stock BB should have better battery life than most smartphones).
No one with a brain in RIM will ever defend them in a public forum. Publicly posting about RIM if you work there is a career limiting move, if not a firing offense. (a running joke; "if a break 'x' rule, what will happen?" "you'll be fired, sued, and criminally prosecuted"). On more than one occasion I saw an email threatening criminal prosecution if employees did 'x'. Internally engaging in social media to talk about the company or products is expressly forbidden. It's roughly similar to Microsoft's policy 7 years ago or so. (ie: if worked here, this post would be a fireable offense, even if it were in defense of the company).
“People really think Mike has lost his touch and vision. He’s paranoid. It’s not uncommon to see him walking around campus with bodyguards in tow": while he may have lost touch and vision, it's probably pretty sound for every billionaire to have bodyguards (as a bad guy, if an operation costs a million dollars but can net 10-100 million dollars, it's probably a good investment; so billionaires should probably have body guards). Bill Gates, circa 1993, was the only employee of Microsoft to have a dedicated parking spot (so it could be secured).
posted by a subpoena can kill this sockpuppet at 1:28 AM on July 17, 2011
While I didn't create a sock-puppet to be a cheerleader, and agree with much of the insight from this article (eg: “RIM is a reactionary company.”), it does have a history of quality engineering. They knew how many text messages they were getting from a AA battery, and continued to obsess over battery life like no others (pitfall: 3rd party apps can fucking kill your BB, but a stock BB should have better battery life than most smartphones).
No one with a brain in RIM will ever defend them in a public forum. Publicly posting about RIM if you work there is a career limiting move, if not a firing offense. (a running joke; "if a break 'x' rule, what will happen?" "you'll be fired, sued, and criminally prosecuted"). On more than one occasion I saw an email threatening criminal prosecution if employees did 'x'. Internally engaging in social media to talk about the company or products is expressly forbidden. It's roughly similar to Microsoft's policy 7 years ago or so. (ie: if worked here, this post would be a fireable offense, even if it were in defense of the company).
“People really think Mike has lost his touch and vision. He’s paranoid. It’s not uncommon to see him walking around campus with bodyguards in tow": while he may have lost touch and vision, it's probably pretty sound for every billionaire to have bodyguards (as a bad guy, if an operation costs a million dollars but can net 10-100 million dollars, it's probably a good investment; so billionaires should probably have body guards). Bill Gates, circa 1993, was the only employee of Microsoft to have a dedicated parking spot (so it could be secured).
posted by a subpoena can kill this sockpuppet at 1:28 AM on July 17, 2011
wierdo: "Android is starting to take over on the low end, though."
Too right, and since you can get a phone with an 800x480 capacitive screen, app store, and all the trimmings for around £80 new, I wonder if anyone's going to muscle Android out of the budget end.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 1:41 AM on July 17, 2011
Too right, and since you can get a phone with an 800x480 capacitive screen, app store, and all the trimmings for around £80 new, I wonder if anyone's going to muscle Android out of the budget end.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 1:41 AM on July 17, 2011
“They’re selling a screen with a giant calculator attached to it. It’s not a cool device anymore.”
This is weird.
Craige Fleischer, Regional Director Southern Africa at RIM, shares his excitement pointing out that the active youth of today is what made everything possible:
"Generation Y’s choice of BlackBerry for the coolest brand overall reflects the importance the smartphone has assumed in the increasingly connected lives of a tech-savvy generation. The BlackBerry smartphone is a social tool and a lifestyle device that keeps them in touch with everything that matters to them."
Actually make that cognitive dissonance. I was at a mobile apps developer competition/conference last month in Kenya. I never heard the word Blackberry. If it wasn't basic SMS etc it was Android (Yes, ArmyofKittens, sub $100 android smartphones that look good and are 'powered by Google' branded are selling like hotcakes)
posted by infini at 2:08 AM on July 17, 2011
This is weird.
Craige Fleischer, Regional Director Southern Africa at RIM, shares his excitement pointing out that the active youth of today is what made everything possible:
"Generation Y’s choice of BlackBerry for the coolest brand overall reflects the importance the smartphone has assumed in the increasingly connected lives of a tech-savvy generation. The BlackBerry smartphone is a social tool and a lifestyle device that keeps them in touch with everything that matters to them."
Actually make that cognitive dissonance. I was at a mobile apps developer competition/conference last month in Kenya. I never heard the word Blackberry. If it wasn't basic SMS etc it was Android (Yes, ArmyofKittens, sub $100 android smartphones that look good and are 'powered by Google' branded are selling like hotcakes)
posted by infini at 2:08 AM on July 17, 2011
That's fucking long term planning.
That's been attributed to Tim Cook, Apple's COO and #1 pick for CEO when Jobs goes. Remember that as much as it was the vision of Jobs to make a great product that propelled Apple to renewed success, it was just as much Cook's ability to ensure the actual product could get made in the volumes required to leave Apple now sitting with $60 billion in cash.
Apple got a lot of notice for locking up massive supplies of 11 inch LCD screens (probably the real reason why most competitors launch tablets are 9 inch, they just can't find suitable quantities of 11 inch ones) and Flash memory.
There was a financial results conference call from last year where Cook announced that Apple had just secured the supply another unnamed critical component (besides Flash/LCD screens) for the foreseeable future. Can you imagine the feeling of dread at other manufacturers logistics departments as they frantically look over their component sheet trying to figure out what will soon be in short supply and what they'll have to start sourcing and scrounging from various suppliers with differing quality levels?
posted by PenDevil at 2:09 AM on July 17, 2011 [2 favorites]
That's been attributed to Tim Cook, Apple's COO and #1 pick for CEO when Jobs goes. Remember that as much as it was the vision of Jobs to make a great product that propelled Apple to renewed success, it was just as much Cook's ability to ensure the actual product could get made in the volumes required to leave Apple now sitting with $60 billion in cash.
Apple got a lot of notice for locking up massive supplies of 11 inch LCD screens (probably the real reason why most competitors launch tablets are 9 inch, they just can't find suitable quantities of 11 inch ones) and Flash memory.
There was a financial results conference call from last year where Cook announced that Apple had just secured the supply another unnamed critical component (besides Flash/LCD screens) for the foreseeable future. Can you imagine the feeling of dread at other manufacturers logistics departments as they frantically look over their component sheet trying to figure out what will soon be in short supply and what they'll have to start sourcing and scrounging from various suppliers with differing quality levels?
posted by PenDevil at 2:09 AM on July 17, 2011 [2 favorites]
BlackBerry still seems very popular with teenage girls. This is in the UK, and I guess the US is different.
A lot of the BlackBerry hate at the moment seems to be riddled with hindsight. The success of the iPhone and the iPhone form factor couldn't have been reliably seen 10 years ago. Companies like BlackBerry and Nokia have made mistakes, but I don't think its all as obvious as people are painting it.
posted by seanyboy at 2:35 AM on July 17, 2011
A lot of the BlackBerry hate at the moment seems to be riddled with hindsight. The success of the iPhone and the iPhone form factor couldn't have been reliably seen 10 years ago. Companies like BlackBerry and Nokia have made mistakes, but I don't think its all as obvious as people are painting it.
posted by seanyboy at 2:35 AM on July 17, 2011
Btw. The encrypted RIM service is a feature, not a bug. There's a reason BlackBerry is popular in more oppressive countries.
posted by seanyboy at 2:37 AM on July 17, 2011 [2 favorites]
posted by seanyboy at 2:37 AM on July 17, 2011 [2 favorites]
RIM had a great niche - secure enterprise connectivity and communication solutions that were portable and personal.
The global mobile landscape has changed - on one level, since 2007 due to the iPhone and its user experience, and on another level, due to the extremely rapid adoption and growth of mobile phones (regardless of their intelligence) across the world regardless of demographics, income level or even, infrastructural capacity. This shift too started around 2007.
In this landscape, incumbents who were leaders in their field and built the markets and educated their customer base are all feeling the pinch - witness the same kinds of things being said inside of Nokia and now RIM.
Imho, afaik, what has actually changed is the enduser's perception and understanding of what a portable, personal communications device actually means. What this perception is, what is the role that the device plays in the daily life, and what its future path of evolution will be is not only under transition (in emerging markets) but simultaneously little understood as its study is fragmented depending on who is buying the research. [there is far more here but not required at the moment]
Steve Jobs leapt forward with interface innovation on hte small screened window into the information stream we all access - it changed the expectation of the segment of the market that was *not* fanboi mac user designa types and until then were accustomed to clunky machines at work or in general. (PC, phone, whatever)
Geographically too the market leaderships changed. Where the first world led the technological advances in computing devices and the rest followed has also been fragmented into segments based on the challenges of their operating environments. On one level nothing makes sense anymore in terms of the landscape - instead of oohing and aahing over flashlights on their Nokia, waitrons in Africa save up to buy Galaxy tabs. (but you are a poor African, buy a goat not a fancy phone)
RIM had a cash cow (remember the BCG matrix?) - the government and big business. It had a geography - the first world. But its saturated/ing - do they reincarnate themselves in maintenance like an IBM or M$ or do they try to become the coolest brand among South African teenagers?
Nokia had a cash cow - low cost well engineered phones that did their job under any conditions. That mattered when phones were still new (in their high growth markets in Africa and Asia etc) and customers were awed by them. Today, its cheaper to buy a noname chinese phone with all the features than a refurbished big brand.
What needs to be captured is the public's imagination - which Apple did very well - and such a breakthrough is unlikely on the same scale/timing/tipping point of the mobile phone revolution of 2007 (Ironically that year I gave the closing plenary on the future of CHI in San Jose and there was pressure on me not to speak. The iPhone had not yet launched in the USA and sms was barely used. Mobiles were suspect devices and not post industrial platforms for innovation)
Given this context, what is the future for these brands but to destroy themselves and rebuild and reposition themselves in a whole new way before the inevitable tide of the market does it for them. Status quo now remains only in the minds of the insiders fighting for survival.
It is one thing to change the rules of the marketplace, as Jobs did. It is another when the entire playing field changes. That is what is happening in the arena of personal communications devices. Where is DEC today or Packard Bell? Is Pullman the leader or Westinghouse?
I see Android becoming the M$ to Apple's iOS but the pirates are in the Red Sea, not the valley.
posted by infini at 3:21 AM on July 17, 2011 [4 favorites]
The global mobile landscape has changed - on one level, since 2007 due to the iPhone and its user experience, and on another level, due to the extremely rapid adoption and growth of mobile phones (regardless of their intelligence) across the world regardless of demographics, income level or even, infrastructural capacity. This shift too started around 2007.
In this landscape, incumbents who were leaders in their field and built the markets and educated their customer base are all feeling the pinch - witness the same kinds of things being said inside of Nokia and now RIM.
Imho, afaik, what has actually changed is the enduser's perception and understanding of what a portable, personal communications device actually means. What this perception is, what is the role that the device plays in the daily life, and what its future path of evolution will be is not only under transition (in emerging markets) but simultaneously little understood as its study is fragmented depending on who is buying the research. [there is far more here but not required at the moment]
Steve Jobs leapt forward with interface innovation on hte small screened window into the information stream we all access - it changed the expectation of the segment of the market that was *not* fanboi mac user designa types and until then were accustomed to clunky machines at work or in general. (PC, phone, whatever)
Geographically too the market leaderships changed. Where the first world led the technological advances in computing devices and the rest followed has also been fragmented into segments based on the challenges of their operating environments. On one level nothing makes sense anymore in terms of the landscape - instead of oohing and aahing over flashlights on their Nokia, waitrons in Africa save up to buy Galaxy tabs. (but you are a poor African, buy a goat not a fancy phone)
RIM had a cash cow (remember the BCG matrix?) - the government and big business. It had a geography - the first world. But its saturated/ing - do they reincarnate themselves in maintenance like an IBM or M$ or do they try to become the coolest brand among South African teenagers?
Nokia had a cash cow - low cost well engineered phones that did their job under any conditions. That mattered when phones were still new (in their high growth markets in Africa and Asia etc) and customers were awed by them. Today, its cheaper to buy a noname chinese phone with all the features than a refurbished big brand.
What needs to be captured is the public's imagination - which Apple did very well - and such a breakthrough is unlikely on the same scale/timing/tipping point of the mobile phone revolution of 2007 (Ironically that year I gave the closing plenary on the future of CHI in San Jose and there was pressure on me not to speak. The iPhone had not yet launched in the USA and sms was barely used. Mobiles were suspect devices and not post industrial platforms for innovation)
Given this context, what is the future for these brands but to destroy themselves and rebuild and reposition themselves in a whole new way before the inevitable tide of the market does it for them. Status quo now remains only in the minds of the insiders fighting for survival.
It is one thing to change the rules of the marketplace, as Jobs did. It is another when the entire playing field changes. That is what is happening in the arena of personal communications devices. Where is DEC today or Packard Bell? Is Pullman the leader or Westinghouse?
I see Android becoming the M$ to Apple's iOS but the pirates are in the Red Sea, not the valley.
posted by infini at 3:21 AM on July 17, 2011 [4 favorites]
I work at a Fortune 500 company. BB was the only supported solution 2-3 years ago. Now that has completely changed, only iOS and Android phones are supported.
posted by arcticseal at 4:25 AM on July 17, 2011
posted by arcticseal at 4:25 AM on July 17, 2011
Technically, there's no reason why this couldn't be done, though Apple's secrecy would make this quite a challenge to create a clone OS.
It gets harder. I believe that it's a part of the iOS developer agreement that you will only distribute iOS apps through the app store. So for your theoretical non-Apple phone to work, it'd have to connect to the app store. Never happen.
posted by middleclasstool at 7:07 AM on July 17, 2011
It gets harder. I believe that it's a part of the iOS developer agreement that you will only distribute iOS apps through the app store. So for your theoretical non-Apple phone to work, it'd have to connect to the app store. Never happen.
posted by middleclasstool at 7:07 AM on July 17, 2011
Apple's lawyers would make it impossible to bring an iOS clone phone to maket on any carrier. Also Andriod pretty much destroys the market for iOS clones.
posted by humanfont at 8:23 AM on July 17, 2011
posted by humanfont at 8:23 AM on July 17, 2011
Yes, dumbland, I'm thinking of the Palm Foleo--Doh!
Back to my more sensible argument, if the Playbook can really, truly, run Android apps, then I think it has a chance. Then they can go backwards and come out with a Playbook/iPhone type phone.
posted by eye of newt at 8:36 AM on July 17, 2011
Back to my more sensible argument, if the Playbook can really, truly, run Android apps, then I think it has a chance. Then they can go backwards and come out with a Playbook/iPhone type phone.
posted by eye of newt at 8:36 AM on July 17, 2011
I ride the Washington DC subway and bus systems a lot, and I think they work pretty well as a non-scientific metric of the mobile phone market in general (given that DC has a lot of heavy enterprise phone usage in addition to personal use). There was a time it was almost exclusively Blackberries, with feature phones picking up the slack. Now it's definitely shifted to iPhones and Android, Blackberries are becoming rarer and rarer. By the DC mass-transit metric RIM is in deep, deep trouble.
posted by CosmicRayCharles at 9:51 AM on July 17, 2011 [2 favorites]
posted by CosmicRayCharles at 9:51 AM on July 17, 2011 [2 favorites]
Companies like BlackBerry and Nokia have made mistakes, but I don't think its all as obvious as people are painting it.
They failed to envision the need for a working web browser until 2008, failed to implement one until 2010, and did not offer the update to their older phones, many of which were still being actively sold and promoted at the time.
That's a bit more extreme than failing to anticipate the development of usable touchscreens and their accompanying UIs. The rot runs deep in every facet of RIM's business -- the bits of it that are outwardly apparent to the consumer segment are arguably the most trivial and easily fixed. It's not particularly difficult to buy a batch of touchscreens and slap them on top of your hardware.
I've written extensively about this in past RIM posts, but it also needs to go without saying that RIM — a company that should by all logic be very friendly to its 3rd-party developers, especially those on the corporate level, completely fails to have a compelling platform to develop on top of. Documentation is poor, inaccurate, bizarre (APIs whose only documentation is in powerpoint format), or nonexistent.
It takes about 10-15 minutes for a BlackBerry device to "boot" up. It can take hours to do a software update.
Also, their failure to implement a usable browser/HTML/DOM/JavaScript engine is a serious deterrent to developers. Once they finally started taking that stuff seriously, it was too late. Their proprietary browser used IE4's DOM as its "inspiration," and botched even that. Finally, they switched to WebKit in OS6, but didn't offer the update to existing users.
Oh, and for an unabashedly windows-centric company, RIM sure is adamant about using a java-centric development cycle and toolchain. Something about it just feels wrong.
posted by schmod at 10:02 AM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]
They failed to envision the need for a working web browser until 2008, failed to implement one until 2010, and did not offer the update to their older phones, many of which were still being actively sold and promoted at the time.
That's a bit more extreme than failing to anticipate the development of usable touchscreens and their accompanying UIs. The rot runs deep in every facet of RIM's business -- the bits of it that are outwardly apparent to the consumer segment are arguably the most trivial and easily fixed. It's not particularly difficult to buy a batch of touchscreens and slap them on top of your hardware.
I've written extensively about this in past RIM posts, but it also needs to go without saying that RIM — a company that should by all logic be very friendly to its 3rd-party developers, especially those on the corporate level, completely fails to have a compelling platform to develop on top of. Documentation is poor, inaccurate, bizarre (APIs whose only documentation is in powerpoint format), or nonexistent.
It takes about 10-15 minutes for a BlackBerry device to "boot" up. It can take hours to do a software update.
Also, their failure to implement a usable browser/HTML/DOM/JavaScript engine is a serious deterrent to developers. Once they finally started taking that stuff seriously, it was too late. Their proprietary browser used IE4's DOM as its "inspiration," and botched even that. Finally, they switched to WebKit in OS6, but didn't offer the update to existing users.
Oh, and for an unabashedly windows-centric company, RIM sure is adamant about using a java-centric development cycle and toolchain. Something about it just feels wrong.
posted by schmod at 10:02 AM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]
RIM couldn't have fumbled the PlayBook launch any worse if their hands were covered in butter.
It's a 7 inch tablet priced the same as the 10 inch iPad 2. It has a shorter battery life. It has no native mail client, no BBM, no address book, no calendar. You have to pair a BlackBerry with the PlayBook to get any of these running, and all your data disappears once the bridge is turned off. It doesn't run any of the BlackBerry apps, only the approximately 3,000 apps especially written for PlayBook. It has a front and rear camera but no video-chatting software.
But it has Flash. By God, it has Flash. It also has multitasking; a potential killer feature that seems less killer when there's so little you can actually run.
So how do RIM advertise the new PlayBook? "Amateur Hour is Over".
Some things are meant to be coming Real Soon Now. Native email. A BlackBerry apps emulator. An Android apps emulator (but only Android phone apps, not the tablet-optimised ones). But launching on the basis of what's coming is never a good strategy, especially in the fickle consumer market. By the time the PlayBook is actually a worthwhile tablet -- assuming it ever becomes one -- the market will have already moved on to the next hot thing.
HP is facing a similar problem with its recent TouchPad, which also launched with problems (in its case, very buggy software). I have more faith in the TouchPad becoming a viable competitor to the iPad than I do the PlayBook, but I think that, in both cases, the companies would've been better served by waiting longer to launch. RIM and HP aren't competing with the iPhone of four years ago. They're competing with the iPad 2 of today, and they need to be ready to rumble.
posted by Georgina at 10:08 AM on July 17, 2011
It's a 7 inch tablet priced the same as the 10 inch iPad 2. It has a shorter battery life. It has no native mail client, no BBM, no address book, no calendar. You have to pair a BlackBerry with the PlayBook to get any of these running, and all your data disappears once the bridge is turned off. It doesn't run any of the BlackBerry apps, only the approximately 3,000 apps especially written for PlayBook. It has a front and rear camera but no video-chatting software.
But it has Flash. By God, it has Flash. It also has multitasking; a potential killer feature that seems less killer when there's so little you can actually run.
So how do RIM advertise the new PlayBook? "Amateur Hour is Over".
Some things are meant to be coming Real Soon Now. Native email. A BlackBerry apps emulator. An Android apps emulator (but only Android phone apps, not the tablet-optimised ones). But launching on the basis of what's coming is never a good strategy, especially in the fickle consumer market. By the time the PlayBook is actually a worthwhile tablet -- assuming it ever becomes one -- the market will have already moved on to the next hot thing.
HP is facing a similar problem with its recent TouchPad, which also launched with problems (in its case, very buggy software). I have more faith in the TouchPad becoming a viable competitor to the iPad than I do the PlayBook, but I think that, in both cases, the companies would've been better served by waiting longer to launch. RIM and HP aren't competing with the iPhone of four years ago. They're competing with the iPad 2 of today, and they need to be ready to rumble.
posted by Georgina at 10:08 AM on July 17, 2011
Indeed. The Playbook project/launch was truly terrible. When Apple launched FCP X it was very Playbookian.
But, as mentioned above, there is room to recover. The ebb and flow of the electronics industry can be fascinating but it has swallowed up many a company and some, seemingly dead, have come back to triumph (I think RIM could at best survive, but it's grim, and they have to act now, and well).
posted by juiceCake at 10:22 AM on July 17, 2011
But, as mentioned above, there is room to recover. The ebb and flow of the electronics industry can be fascinating but it has swallowed up many a company and some, seemingly dead, have come back to triumph (I think RIM could at best survive, but it's grim, and they have to act now, and well).
posted by juiceCake at 10:22 AM on July 17, 2011
I was never willing to pay for a data plan, so I never bought a smartphone for personal use. I was issued a Blackberry for work at my new job, so this past year has actually been my first experience actually using a smartphone day-to-day.
My overwhelming impression of the Blackberry is confusion over how this device has not been pushed out by a competitor by now for corporate use, as this thing seems to do nothing well. The phone quality is impossibly poor, the web browser is slow and unreliable (or you can cripple it into uselessness to improve the speed!), and the setup/config options seem completely unintuitive in terms of meaningful choices.
Of course, I'm also puzzled as to why the university for which i work still chooses to keep Blackberry as the standard-issue smartphone since the university switched to Gmail, as it doesn't really fully integrate with the Blackberry. A lot of universities are in the same boat. What is RIM providing (or providing more cheaply) that keeps them in that game? Why hasn't LG or Motorola or Sony Ericsson or Samsung or HTC swept in?
posted by desuetude at 10:41 AM on July 17, 2011
My overwhelming impression of the Blackberry is confusion over how this device has not been pushed out by a competitor by now for corporate use, as this thing seems to do nothing well. The phone quality is impossibly poor, the web browser is slow and unreliable (or you can cripple it into uselessness to improve the speed!), and the setup/config options seem completely unintuitive in terms of meaningful choices.
Of course, I'm also puzzled as to why the university for which i work still chooses to keep Blackberry as the standard-issue smartphone since the university switched to Gmail, as it doesn't really fully integrate with the Blackberry. A lot of universities are in the same boat. What is RIM providing (or providing more cheaply) that keeps them in that game? Why hasn't LG or Motorola or Sony Ericsson or Samsung or HTC swept in?
posted by desuetude at 10:41 AM on July 17, 2011
The lesson here is how little lockin there is in technology. When iPhone was first out and super popular Steve Balmer said something like, who cares about 2% of the smartphone market, I've got 70% of the whole market with windows. RIM as well must have thought they owned the smartphone market, they had sold every enterprise on the BES and Barak Obama was demanding the secret service find a way to let him keep his Blackberry.
posted by humanfont at 10:45 AM on July 17, 2011
posted by humanfont at 10:45 AM on July 17, 2011
I ride the Washington DC subway and bus systems a lot, and I think they work pretty well as a non-scientific metric of the mobile phone market in general (given that DC has a lot of heavy enterprise phone usage in addition to personal use). There was a time it was almost exclusively Blackberries, with feature phones picking up the slack. Now it's definitely shifted to iPhones and Android, Blackberries are becoming rarer and rarer. By the DC mass-transit metric RIM is in deep, deep trouble.
When I was working back in Perth I used to take the train every day to work. The iPhone was like manna from heaven. I could browse the web, listen to music, check my email or just play a game if I wanted to. Half an hour on the train? I have "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" playing and hours of stuff to catch up with on Google Reader. I'll be fine.
Before that I used an iPod for music and went through a variety of featurephones (Z1010 and Z800i) and tried Windows Mobile 6 before shifting back to the Z800i because nobody could make a half decent browser anyway.
posted by Talez at 11:14 AM on July 17, 2011
When I was working back in Perth I used to take the train every day to work. The iPhone was like manna from heaven. I could browse the web, listen to music, check my email or just play a game if I wanted to. Half an hour on the train? I have "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" playing and hours of stuff to catch up with on Google Reader. I'll be fine.
Before that I used an iPod for music and went through a variety of featurephones (Z1010 and Z800i) and tried Windows Mobile 6 before shifting back to the Z800i because nobody could make a half decent browser anyway.
posted by Talez at 11:14 AM on July 17, 2011
A couple of thoughts:
First, CosmicRayCharles, may I use your observation for a longer piece? I note your profile and am asking if you'd prefer to simply be referred to as "it has been observed that etc etc" or as a person?
This thread made me think deeply about the flux in the global mobile industry and I am thinking I need to write about it further. I also realize I've been observing the 'poor' end of the market for too long and today's RIM conversation and everyone's comments are making me think about what is happening at the top end, and whether there's a digital divide anymore, and if so, what's it all about.
I don't know if we can tell at this point which way things will go - if anyone knows anyone or has access to articles observing the PC industry in the early 1980s I would be grateful for the links. I"m curious to see if any weak signals were already there then about the way the market evolved.
Apple will never allow clones after their Tangerine experience. I agree with the thought that its because of Android.
I'm fascinated by Samsung's approach - but that is a digression in this thread. Otoh, I'm grateful for this thread because it reignited a spark that had lost its way over the past couple of years. I remember when RIM first came to hire user centered designers and researchers in late 2004 or early 2005 - they were a hot company and it was the first time they were hiring in this field. I've been horrified to read this article and the one in the 'related threads' called "open letter from RIM employee" (that covers the Playbook launch as well as acts as the equivalent of the burning platform letter)
The implication of all of these 'declines' seems to be that Apple is king of the heap. But on the other side of the world, Android offers a development platform that doesn't cost USD 100 to simply read the guidelines and a chance to build local content in local languages.
At this point I don't know if we're at the point where we are able to see which way things are going to evolve (in technology and communications, globally) in the near future (2-3 years) or whether we're in the middle of the flux and still have elasticity to shape the future (which is where the existing opportunities for RIM, Nokia et al are imho)
What do you think?
(and should I just go get my own blog? ;p)
posted by infini at 12:33 PM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]
First, CosmicRayCharles, may I use your observation for a longer piece? I note your profile and am asking if you'd prefer to simply be referred to as "it has been observed that etc etc" or as a person?
This thread made me think deeply about the flux in the global mobile industry and I am thinking I need to write about it further. I also realize I've been observing the 'poor' end of the market for too long and today's RIM conversation and everyone's comments are making me think about what is happening at the top end, and whether there's a digital divide anymore, and if so, what's it all about.
I don't know if we can tell at this point which way things will go - if anyone knows anyone or has access to articles observing the PC industry in the early 1980s I would be grateful for the links. I"m curious to see if any weak signals were already there then about the way the market evolved.
Apple will never allow clones after their Tangerine experience. I agree with the thought that its because of Android.
I'm fascinated by Samsung's approach - but that is a digression in this thread. Otoh, I'm grateful for this thread because it reignited a spark that had lost its way over the past couple of years. I remember when RIM first came to hire user centered designers and researchers in late 2004 or early 2005 - they were a hot company and it was the first time they were hiring in this field. I've been horrified to read this article and the one in the 'related threads' called "open letter from RIM employee" (that covers the Playbook launch as well as acts as the equivalent of the burning platform letter)
The implication of all of these 'declines' seems to be that Apple is king of the heap. But on the other side of the world, Android offers a development platform that doesn't cost USD 100 to simply read the guidelines and a chance to build local content in local languages.
At this point I don't know if we're at the point where we are able to see which way things are going to evolve (in technology and communications, globally) in the near future (2-3 years) or whether we're in the middle of the flux and still have elasticity to shape the future (which is where the existing opportunities for RIM, Nokia et al are imho)
What do you think?
(and should I just go get my own blog? ;p)
posted by infini at 12:33 PM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]
I don't know if we can tell at this point which way things will go - if anyone knows anyone or has access to articles observing the PC industry in the early 1980s I would be grateful for the links. I"m curious to see if any weak signals were already there then about the way the market evolved.
My prediction?
Short of a miracle happening, Android becoming the dominant mobile OS, iOS as #2 and Windows Mobile #3. Nokia will become a boutique phone vendor and will probably hold onto feature phones as long as the developing world keeps subsidizing their volume sales. RIM is sliding and will go the way of the dodo bird unless the mobile Jesus comes and saves them.
RIM will be crushed under the weight of a lower ASP, lower margins, new RIM user numbers falling off a cliff and their existing user base being bled off by competition that have overwhelmingly better operating systems running on slightly better hardware. Their CEOs will bitch and moan to the press about how their shit is technically better and they'll be right but nobody will care.
iOS will slide a little unable to cope with the sheer onslaught of Android devices availabile and the iPhone's inability to defeat all comers on all feature fronts simultaneously. They'll still retain a respectable piece of market share from inertia, true believers™ and people that just don't care and want the iWhatever but as Android phone makers figure out ways to differentiate themselves a certain segment of the market is going to go for certain features come hell or high water. Apple has told the market time and time again they're a premium maker and won't be drawn into populist games and feature wars. They'll do things when they're good and ready to not because some retarded noname phone maker decided they could build in a poor Qik experience and call it better than Facetime because it works over 3G.
Windows Mobile needed Nokia more than Nokia needed Windows Mobile. They needed a platform to showcase it, drive it, give it sexy hardware that consumers could lust after or at least pique their interest in Windows Mobile. The experience is slick and will draw back Microsoft faithful and maybe a few converts so long as the kid selling to the consumer at the AT&T or Verizon store is a Microsoft fan. The desktop software accomplishes the impossible by sucking more than iTunes on Windows but with the race to the cloud on this won't matter in 5 years if not 24 months. Cracks are appearing the armor of Microsoft's promise of universal OS upgrades a'la Apple but it's nowhere near as bad as Android. At least the OS isn't jerky as shit when you put it next to an iPhone.
Android will dominate because it has inertia with developers and it's free*. Phone makers have a large amount of experience with it. They know its quirks, its idiosyncrasies, workarounds to common problems while Google has a near infinite amount of resources (as far as Microsoft is concerned) that they can use to race ahead on feature sets, R&D budget be damned. It has it quirks and poor quality control among handset makers tarnishes the brand to the odd consumer but on the whole if someone comes back complaining a handset is shit they'll just give them another Android handset to try. A small proportion will take the "fuck this I'm going back to the iPhone" attitude but it won't be enough to cause a huge slide in Android numbers. The "shall I want for the next Android version" seems to be universally solved by Google requiring handset makers to provide "timely" updates to gain market access but time will tell how well that solves the fragmentation issue.
posted by Talez at 3:01 PM on July 17, 2011 [3 favorites]
My prediction?
Short of a miracle happening, Android becoming the dominant mobile OS, iOS as #2 and Windows Mobile #3. Nokia will become a boutique phone vendor and will probably hold onto feature phones as long as the developing world keeps subsidizing their volume sales. RIM is sliding and will go the way of the dodo bird unless the mobile Jesus comes and saves them.
RIM will be crushed under the weight of a lower ASP, lower margins, new RIM user numbers falling off a cliff and their existing user base being bled off by competition that have overwhelmingly better operating systems running on slightly better hardware. Their CEOs will bitch and moan to the press about how their shit is technically better and they'll be right but nobody will care.
iOS will slide a little unable to cope with the sheer onslaught of Android devices availabile and the iPhone's inability to defeat all comers on all feature fronts simultaneously. They'll still retain a respectable piece of market share from inertia, true believers™ and people that just don't care and want the iWhatever but as Android phone makers figure out ways to differentiate themselves a certain segment of the market is going to go for certain features come hell or high water. Apple has told the market time and time again they're a premium maker and won't be drawn into populist games and feature wars. They'll do things when they're good and ready to not because some retarded noname phone maker decided they could build in a poor Qik experience and call it better than Facetime because it works over 3G.
Windows Mobile needed Nokia more than Nokia needed Windows Mobile. They needed a platform to showcase it, drive it, give it sexy hardware that consumers could lust after or at least pique their interest in Windows Mobile. The experience is slick and will draw back Microsoft faithful and maybe a few converts so long as the kid selling to the consumer at the AT&T or Verizon store is a Microsoft fan. The desktop software accomplishes the impossible by sucking more than iTunes on Windows but with the race to the cloud on this won't matter in 5 years if not 24 months. Cracks are appearing the armor of Microsoft's promise of universal OS upgrades a'la Apple but it's nowhere near as bad as Android. At least the OS isn't jerky as shit when you put it next to an iPhone.
Android will dominate because it has inertia with developers and it's free*. Phone makers have a large amount of experience with it. They know its quirks, its idiosyncrasies, workarounds to common problems while Google has a near infinite amount of resources (as far as Microsoft is concerned) that they can use to race ahead on feature sets, R&D budget be damned. It has it quirks and poor quality control among handset makers tarnishes the brand to the odd consumer but on the whole if someone comes back complaining a handset is shit they'll just give them another Android handset to try. A small proportion will take the "fuck this I'm going back to the iPhone" attitude but it won't be enough to cause a huge slide in Android numbers. The "shall I want for the next Android version" seems to be universally solved by Google requiring handset makers to provide "timely" updates to gain market access but time will tell how well that solves the fragmentation issue.
posted by Talez at 3:01 PM on July 17, 2011 [3 favorites]
Short of a miracle happening, Android becoming the dominant mobile OS, iOS as #2 and Windows Mobile #3.
From my perspective, this evolution will indeed be a near term miracle and a much needed one. Android (unlike RIM and Nokia) is an OS not a device and its freely available and easily accessible*. Can it finally allow for standardization of the UI on the mobile platform that would trigger the next level of growth (if the history of DOS and all that followed including Windows 3.1 etc) ? I sincerely hope so (and if not Android, then someone please take that step, its the missing link. without standardization half the world's population if not more are hampered by their dependency on pattern recognition in order to use their computing device's functions)
Nokia will become a boutique phone vendor and will probably hold onto feature phones as long as the developing world keeps subsidizing their volume sales.
This is under serious jeopardy for reasons wide and varied, as things stand now, imho. A recent survey of mobile phone shops in Kenya showed that for the entry level $25 price point where Nokia ruled in these markets is shifting from brand quality and resale value considerations to 'What can I get for my budget? oooh is that a camera *and* a radio in that noname thing?'
Their app store is still unable to recompense the developers unlike Google which is rolling out payments and subsidizing attractive handsets (the HuaWei IDEOS for example which finally retailed for around $80).
I very much appreciate reading the rest of your predictions. Gracias.
posted by infini at 3:26 PM on July 17, 2011
From my perspective, this evolution will indeed be a near term miracle and a much needed one. Android (unlike RIM and Nokia) is an OS not a device and its freely available and easily accessible*. Can it finally allow for standardization of the UI on the mobile platform that would trigger the next level of growth (if the history of DOS and all that followed including Windows 3.1 etc) ? I sincerely hope so (and if not Android, then someone please take that step, its the missing link. without standardization half the world's population if not more are hampered by their dependency on pattern recognition in order to use their computing device's functions)
Nokia will become a boutique phone vendor and will probably hold onto feature phones as long as the developing world keeps subsidizing their volume sales.
This is under serious jeopardy for reasons wide and varied, as things stand now, imho. A recent survey of mobile phone shops in Kenya showed that for the entry level $25 price point where Nokia ruled in these markets is shifting from brand quality and resale value considerations to 'What can I get for my budget? oooh is that a camera *and* a radio in that noname thing?'
Their app store is still unable to recompense the developers unlike Google which is rolling out payments and subsidizing attractive handsets (the HuaWei IDEOS for example which finally retailed for around $80).
I very much appreciate reading the rest of your predictions. Gracias.
posted by infini at 3:26 PM on July 17, 2011
ArmyOfKittens wrote: Too right, and since you can get a phone with an 800x480 capacitive screen, app store, and all the trimmings for around £80 new, I wonder if anyone's going to muscle Android out of the budget end.
Symbian could have done it, but now that it's been decided that Symbian is worthless (I disagree; it's much better in a memory constrained environment than Android) it won't happen. That was pretty much the crux of Nokia's strategy for transitioning the developing countries where they sell hundreds of millions of feature phones every year into the smartphone market.
And I'd sure like to know what "[t]heir app store is still unable to recompense the developers" means. Nokia sold more on Ovi Store than the Android Market sold in 2010. (BB's App World was #2, followed by Nokia, then Google) It helps that Nokia has been busy hammering out operator billing agreements. It'll be interesting to see if Android's increasing market share actually translates to significantly more sales in the Market.
posted by wierdo at 4:23 PM on July 17, 2011
Symbian could have done it, but now that it's been decided that Symbian is worthless (I disagree; it's much better in a memory constrained environment than Android) it won't happen. That was pretty much the crux of Nokia's strategy for transitioning the developing countries where they sell hundreds of millions of feature phones every year into the smartphone market.
And I'd sure like to know what "[t]heir app store is still unable to recompense the developers" means. Nokia sold more on Ovi Store than the Android Market sold in 2010. (BB's App World was #2, followed by Nokia, then Google) It helps that Nokia has been busy hammering out operator billing agreements. It'll be interesting to see if Android's increasing market share actually translates to significantly more sales in the Market.
posted by wierdo at 4:23 PM on July 17, 2011
And I'd sure like to know what "[t]heir app store is still unable to recompense the developers" means.
Sorry, I did not clarify that thought properly and was focused on a regional experience/conversation where they have been unable to get operator billing organized yet app development is booming hence the shift away from it.
posted by infini at 4:28 PM on July 17, 2011
Sorry, I did not clarify that thought properly and was focused on a regional experience/conversation where they have been unable to get operator billing organized yet app development is booming hence the shift away from it.
posted by infini at 4:28 PM on July 17, 2011
It pains me to write this. I am a very tolerant reader and I love to read. I will get through most things by sheer force of will. I sincerely apologize to Jonathan Geller if he reads this.
I couldn't get through this article. It is simply shoddy writing and lethargic editing. Granted it had (I'm sure) a lot of things to report, but man-oh-man ...
At least a couple of times the I'm told someone said something and, a short time later, read a quote with the same content. For instance, I'm supposed to picture myself at a RIM meeting and hear Mike Lazaridis "state time and time again" that Blackberries won't have MP3s or Cameras. Later in the same paragraph? Yep, there's Mike Lazaridis quoted: “There will never be a BlackBerry with an MP3 player or camera.” Is this satire?
On second thought, did Mike Lazaridis say that? Did anyone go on record? Anyone? For anything? And the quotes were broken up and peppered throughout the article seemingly at random. I couldn't keep up with who was saying what. And look! Here's a close-quote not attached to anything!
And the bottom line of the article: People who no longer work for RIM aren't crazy with what's going on there. Is that surprising?
Wow. I have never been turned off by an article. Yeah, I'm sure I couldn't do better, but I wasn't the one who wrote it.
Sheesh. I am going to soak my head in a bucket.
posted by tcv at 5:14 PM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]
I couldn't get through this article. It is simply shoddy writing and lethargic editing. Granted it had (I'm sure) a lot of things to report, but man-oh-man ...
At least a couple of times the I'm told someone said something and, a short time later, read a quote with the same content. For instance, I'm supposed to picture myself at a RIM meeting and hear Mike Lazaridis "state time and time again" that Blackberries won't have MP3s or Cameras. Later in the same paragraph? Yep, there's Mike Lazaridis quoted: “There will never be a BlackBerry with an MP3 player or camera.” Is this satire?
On second thought, did Mike Lazaridis say that? Did anyone go on record? Anyone? For anything? And the quotes were broken up and peppered throughout the article seemingly at random. I couldn't keep up with who was saying what. And look! Here's a close-quote not attached to anything!
And the bottom line of the article: People who no longer work for RIM aren't crazy with what's going on there. Is that surprising?
Wow. I have never been turned off by an article. Yeah, I'm sure I couldn't do better, but I wasn't the one who wrote it.
Sheesh. I am going to soak my head in a bucket.
posted by tcv at 5:14 PM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]
I finally switched from a blackberry to an android phone a few weeks ago after using a blackberry for work for 4 years. What had held me back was my familiarity with and typing speed on the blackberry keyboard and its ability to do so well the thing it was designed for: email.
What finally made me switch was planning to buy an iPad and finding out I could save a lot of money by switching to an android phone and using wifi tethering rather than shelling out for the iPad 3G.
I miss a few things - battery life, the mail, calendar and contacts software that worked so well and so well together (although not at all with my gmail/google and outlook contacts and appointments), but there's absolutely no contest with the possibilities of a well-stocked app market.
Apple now competes in a few different markets. It's a player in the PC market with a small range of related devices. It's dominant in the mp3 market with a similar clump of devices (although ubiquitous smartphones are making all but the shuffle redundant). In phones it currently only has the one flagship product. I wonder if we'll see this grow into a small range as well, or whether all these devices (and those in the tablet market, where it still stands almost completely alone) will merge into a continuum of connective devices always expanding in the direction of new technology and new uses.
Obviously, this has already begun to happen with the sharing of an OS between the iPod, iPhone and iPad and the computer-based AppStore and obviously these connections work with Apple's software offerings and music and book stores as well.
Google and Microsoft have a similar background in different areas and therefore a similar ability to share technology across devices and uses and easily extend their reach to the next big thing.
RIM is trying to do this with the playbook, but they just don't have enough of a base of support to make it work.
One could imagine a similar curve for the Kindle and Nook. They do ebooks very well right now, just as RIM was once the king of mobile email.
posted by Vectorcon Systems at 5:15 PM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]
What finally made me switch was planning to buy an iPad and finding out I could save a lot of money by switching to an android phone and using wifi tethering rather than shelling out for the iPad 3G.
I miss a few things - battery life, the mail, calendar and contacts software that worked so well and so well together (although not at all with my gmail/google and outlook contacts and appointments), but there's absolutely no contest with the possibilities of a well-stocked app market.
Apple now competes in a few different markets. It's a player in the PC market with a small range of related devices. It's dominant in the mp3 market with a similar clump of devices (although ubiquitous smartphones are making all but the shuffle redundant). In phones it currently only has the one flagship product. I wonder if we'll see this grow into a small range as well, or whether all these devices (and those in the tablet market, where it still stands almost completely alone) will merge into a continuum of connective devices always expanding in the direction of new technology and new uses.
Obviously, this has already begun to happen with the sharing of an OS between the iPod, iPhone and iPad and the computer-based AppStore and obviously these connections work with Apple's software offerings and music and book stores as well.
Google and Microsoft have a similar background in different areas and therefore a similar ability to share technology across devices and uses and easily extend their reach to the next big thing.
RIM is trying to do this with the playbook, but they just don't have enough of a base of support to make it work.
One could imagine a similar curve for the Kindle and Nook. They do ebooks very well right now, just as RIM was once the king of mobile email.
posted by Vectorcon Systems at 5:15 PM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]
"...Gmail, as it doesn't really fully integrate with the Blackberry. "
Come again? It works just fine. Tags are a little hard to navigate, but I don't think the Blackberry (at least as of OS 5) promises that it will do this.
posted by gjc at 5:23 PM on July 17, 2011
Come again? It works just fine. Tags are a little hard to navigate, but I don't think the Blackberry (at least as of OS 5) promises that it will do this.
posted by gjc at 5:23 PM on July 17, 2011
I miss a few things - battery life, the mail, calendar and contacts software that worked so well and so well together (although not at all with my gmail/google and outlook contacts and appointments), but there's absolutely no contest with the possibilities of a well-stocked app market.
There is the difference: some people like the idea of possibilities, others just want the goddamned thing to work. Its a qualitative difference versus a quantitative one, I think.
Question for the "Blackberry is lame" people: what's the last OS version you've used? Are you comparing some old ver4.5 OS on a phone you get free with your plan? Because I am truly astounded at the difference between my experiences (with all the OSs) and the reported experiences here.
posted by gjc at 5:28 PM on July 17, 2011
There is the difference: some people like the idea of possibilities, others just want the goddamned thing to work. Its a qualitative difference versus a quantitative one, I think.
Question for the "Blackberry is lame" people: what's the last OS version you've used? Are you comparing some old ver4.5 OS on a phone you get free with your plan? Because I am truly astounded at the difference between my experiences (with all the OSs) and the reported experiences here.
posted by gjc at 5:28 PM on July 17, 2011
BES is not an inherently terrible thing
I beg to digger... I had to do a memory-dump debug of it once (shudders in Lovecraftian horror memories...) - RIM was a client of my former employer and well... no one else was available. I lost 30 sanity points that week...
posted by jkaczor at 6:03 PM on July 17, 2011
I beg to digger... I had to do a memory-dump debug of it once (shudders in Lovecraftian horror memories...) - RIM was a client of my former employer and well... no one else was available. I lost 30 sanity points that week...
posted by jkaczor at 6:03 PM on July 17, 2011
I was referring more to the overall architecture of the solution than the software implementation. (which works fine for me, but I run small shops)
posted by wierdo at 6:18 PM on July 17, 2011
posted by wierdo at 6:18 PM on July 17, 2011
I think what some people are forgetting here is that the BlackBerry isn't just missing a sizable and useful app marketplace today, it will be missing one for the foreseeable future. As schmod points out, their developer documentation and APIs are crap. Most mobile app shops are going to focus their attention on iOS and Android (it's enough of a pain to support those two in both phone and tablet variants) because they can reach 65+% of the market that way, and neither platform is usually a complete pain in the ass to develop for. It's a whole lot easier to hire people with iOS and Android development experience than it is to find BlackBerry app programmers, and the mess that is RIM's documentation makes it hard for new developers to learn. 16-year-olds aren't playing around with BlackBerry app development in their spare time.
This hurts in the enterprise market too, where BlackBerry has long set its hopes. Fortune 500s would be a whole lot more committed to RIM if they had a stock of in-house apps for the platform. But as far as I know, a lot of execs were basically just using their devices for email, calendar, contacts, and phone, and those basic features don't have nearly the same kind of lock-in as custom business apps.
The only way I see this changing at this point is if RIM manages to get the ability to run Android apps, not just on the PlayBook, but on all their phones. Doing so wouldn't be easy from a technical perspective, and maintaining compatibility will be even harder. Even if they do pull this off and Android apps run on the BlackBerry just like on any Android phone, RIM will have just put themselves in the precarious position of being one step closer to making commodity Android devices. It would be even harder for them to convince businesses to support BlackBerry, when they could just support Android and have a wide range of devices to choose from.
Frankly, I wouldn't be all that surprised to see RIM effectively give up at some point and try to enact retribution for all its patent woes by turning into a patent troll themselves.
posted by zachlipton at 7:37 PM on July 17, 2011
This hurts in the enterprise market too, where BlackBerry has long set its hopes. Fortune 500s would be a whole lot more committed to RIM if they had a stock of in-house apps for the platform. But as far as I know, a lot of execs were basically just using their devices for email, calendar, contacts, and phone, and those basic features don't have nearly the same kind of lock-in as custom business apps.
The only way I see this changing at this point is if RIM manages to get the ability to run Android apps, not just on the PlayBook, but on all their phones. Doing so wouldn't be easy from a technical perspective, and maintaining compatibility will be even harder. Even if they do pull this off and Android apps run on the BlackBerry just like on any Android phone, RIM will have just put themselves in the precarious position of being one step closer to making commodity Android devices. It would be even harder for them to convince businesses to support BlackBerry, when they could just support Android and have a wide range of devices to choose from.
Frankly, I wouldn't be all that surprised to see RIM effectively give up at some point and try to enact retribution for all its patent woes by turning into a patent troll themselves.
posted by zachlipton at 7:37 PM on July 17, 2011
> Short of a miracle happening, Android becoming the dominant mobile OS, iOS as #2 and Windows Mobile #3.
Great summary, Talez.
According to Nielsen, 50% of new phone purchases in the US are Android, so there seems to be no doubt Android will become number one sooner rather than later.
But it's also worth noting is that Apple has never been focused on phone market share. Apple is focused on profit. They entered the market with a premium product and it's paid off for them, because although Apple only has 4-5% of the global phone market, they make over 50% of the total profits. Apple makes more profit manufacturing and selling mobile phones than RIM, Nokia, Samsung, HTC, etc combined.
And that's what I think a lot of pundits miss (including the PC World article I linked above). Apple aren't losing overall market share because the Apple market is only true believers. Apple is losing overall market share because Android is competing in two markets -- the premium smartphone market and the newer low-end smartphone market -- and Apple is only competing in one. Apple would rather sell fewer products but make more money.
I do think Apple will eventually enter the low-end market, just as they have with the iMac and Mac Mini computers and the iPod Shuffle and Nano. But Apple has always started in the premium market and worked its way down.
RIM is in a better position than most manufacturers, because they control their own OS. But to appeal to a wide audience again, they'd have to make changes that I don't think anybody can see them making with their current management. Their handling of the PlayBook shows where the company appears to be at right now: release a product with a poor user experience but good hardware, act like it's the best thing ever, be surprised when the accolades don't come. Just as the average person doesn't really care about the battery life on their phone, the average person seems to care less about Flash and multitasking than RIM expected.
(I've had an iPhone for several years and have never once been in a situation where I wished it had Flash. Multitasking, on the other hand, is a terrific feature, but you can't sell a phone or tablet only on multitasking. You need a good user experience to multitask with first.)
Perhaps, like Palm, RIM's only way forward will be to be bought by somebody else.
posted by Georgina at 12:14 AM on July 18, 2011 [2 favorites]
Great summary, Talez.
According to Nielsen, 50% of new phone purchases in the US are Android, so there seems to be no doubt Android will become number one sooner rather than later.
But it's also worth noting is that Apple has never been focused on phone market share. Apple is focused on profit. They entered the market with a premium product and it's paid off for them, because although Apple only has 4-5% of the global phone market, they make over 50% of the total profits. Apple makes more profit manufacturing and selling mobile phones than RIM, Nokia, Samsung, HTC, etc combined.
And that's what I think a lot of pundits miss (including the PC World article I linked above). Apple aren't losing overall market share because the Apple market is only true believers. Apple is losing overall market share because Android is competing in two markets -- the premium smartphone market and the newer low-end smartphone market -- and Apple is only competing in one. Apple would rather sell fewer products but make more money.
I do think Apple will eventually enter the low-end market, just as they have with the iMac and Mac Mini computers and the iPod Shuffle and Nano. But Apple has always started in the premium market and worked its way down.
RIM is in a better position than most manufacturers, because they control their own OS. But to appeal to a wide audience again, they'd have to make changes that I don't think anybody can see them making with their current management. Their handling of the PlayBook shows where the company appears to be at right now: release a product with a poor user experience but good hardware, act like it's the best thing ever, be surprised when the accolades don't come. Just as the average person doesn't really care about the battery life on their phone, the average person seems to care less about Flash and multitasking than RIM expected.
(I've had an iPhone for several years and have never once been in a situation where I wished it had Flash. Multitasking, on the other hand, is a terrific feature, but you can't sell a phone or tablet only on multitasking. You need a good user experience to multitask with first.)
Perhaps, like Palm, RIM's only way forward will be to be bought by somebody else.
posted by Georgina at 12:14 AM on July 18, 2011 [2 favorites]
One more push against RIM, I noticed today that Apple is making a foray into bringing apps into a volume purchasing/control program.
posted by msbutah at 3:23 PM on July 18, 2011
posted by msbutah at 3:23 PM on July 18, 2011
London Riots. how BlackBerry Messenger played a key role
Makes my earlier comment look kinda prescient. Also, you can't buy that kind of publicity.
posted by seanyboy at 3:17 PM on August 8, 2011
Makes my earlier comment look kinda prescient. Also, you can't buy that kind of publicity.
posted by seanyboy at 3:17 PM on August 8, 2011
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posted by mhoye at 5:28 PM on July 16, 2011 [1 favorite]