RIM death watch

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the DRIZZLE

Platinum Member
Sep 6, 2007
2,956
1
81
There is no debate. Microsoft made $5 billion last quarter. RIM lost $500 million. People have gotten so used to Microsoft that they literally forget they are the 3rd most valuable company by market cap after Apple and Exxon Mobile. the dysfunctional period of Microsoft was 2002-2009 from the launch after XP to the release of Windows 7. I haven't seen them make any major missteps since then (and anyone who mentions the Kin, Verizon basically left them out to dry by requiring smartphone data plans).

You are giving MS too much credit. There is a difference between acknowledging that they enjoy massive structural advantages and calling it a strategy. It's not a strategy, it's just the result of good things they did in the past and some luck. They aren't actively deciding to be incompetent.

I would also dispute your point that they haven't made any missteps since the Kin. They were a year late in launching WP7 and continue to be at least a year behind Apple and Android. They also went after the wrong market. They should have gone after the enterprise market first. They are far stronger there and RIM is a much weaker opponent then Apple or Google.

If you think back to how much money MS has spent on smartphones between Windows Mobile, the Danger acquisition and Kin, and the WP7, you can't help but wonder what would have happened if they had directed all that toward the enterprise market. For reference it likely totals more than RIM's current market cap (and RIM still has 2x the share of WP7). IF they had done that RIM might be out of business right now.
 

BladeVenom

Lifer
Jun 2, 2005
13,365
16
0
You're right. Fortunately for them software isn't only applied in those feilds. PC's still move ~350M in volume every year, I guess the majority of consumers doesn't apply here. Office 2010 has moved something like ~250M, but that won't apply.

Consumers are locked into Windows on the desktop. It certainly isn't because of anything Ballmer's done.

On new devices where they have a choice, Windows is their last choice.

I own an Android phone. Kin was probably terrible, I've never used one. I'm not an MS zealot like you probably think I am
Even if you're not, most MS zealots don't want a Microsoft phone.
 

rsutoratosu

Platinum Member
Feb 18, 2011
2,716
4
81
My company will single handed save rimm, against my suggestions, we now own 35 bb curve 9360 activated today
 

3chordcharlie

Diamond Member
Mar 30, 2004
9,859
1
81
We'll see once early next year hits.

I really don't care either way - I hate my Blackberry 9000 [company provided] and honestly would rather have a Windows phone, droid, or iphone instead.
So you're using a more than 4-year old device, at best you might have had an iphone 3G. Which you would (and should) also hate.
 

rockyct

Diamond Member
Jun 23, 2001
6,656
32
91
You are giving MS too much credit. There is a difference between acknowledging that they enjoy massive structural advantages and calling it a strategy. It's not a strategy, it's just the result of good things they did in the past and some luck. They aren't actively deciding to be incompetent.

I would also dispute your point that they haven't made any missteps since the Kin. They were a year late in launching WP7 and continue to be at least a year behind Apple and Android. They also went after the wrong market. They should have gone after the enterprise market first. They are far stronger there and RIM is a much weaker opponent then Apple or Google.

If you think back to how much money MS has spent on smartphones between Windows Mobile, the Danger acquisition and Kin, and the WP7, you can't help but wonder what would have happened if they had directed all that toward the enterprise market. For reference it likely totals more than RIM's current market cap (and RIM still has 2x the share of WP7). IF they had done that RIM might be out of business right now.
First off, the Kin was actually a great device for the preteen crowd. The issue was that it required the full data plan and that was not what they had intended. No sane person would skip a full smartphone for the feature phone if they were paying the same data bill. It was also a different team from WP7 so there was no support behind the Kin. This, of course, was a structural failure of Microsoft but I think they've gotten it together right now. They are rev'ing pretty much their entire product line over the next six months (and a new Xbox next fall) while completely embracing Metro in everything, even Win Server.

I think either way they were screwed with WP7. I don't think going after the enterprise market would have been any better and they probably knew they were going to be ditching the CE kernel. They could have cleaned up Windows Mobile a bit, but it was showing its age and you could only put so much lipstick on that pig.

The heaviest bleeding was with the consumer market and waiting to WP8 to go after that market would have been a complete death to the platform. They would just be releasing a consumer phone this fall, and that would be unacceptable. This is also why they are going after the tablet market now and letting the desktop sit on the back burner. Companies were not going to upgrade to Win8 no matter what but they couldn't let more time go by without a push for a solid Windows consumer tablet. I'm sure Win9 will fix some issues that Metro has on PCs and no, they are not going to remove the desktop in Win9.

I think Microsoft finally has a cohesive strategy right now and while late for the phone/tablet, they may be able to push their way into that market with Metro on PCs. This is not what a stagnant company resting on its cash cows would do. They are taking a huge risk in possibly destroying their PC dominance but they think it's worth it to have a real tablet and phone solution. They still may end up going down in a ball of fire, but I respect them for going all in on Metro. They have a massive pile of cash to through at this problem, and like with the Xbox, it may just eventually work.
 

dmcowen674

No Lifer
Oct 13, 1999
54,889
47
91
www.alienbabeltech.com
I did not know they stole this Remote Enterprise Server Technology.

Close this shit down now

7-13-2012

http://news.yahoo.com/rim-hit-147-2-mn-patent-payout-171348743.html

RIM hit with $147.2 mn patent payout



A California jury has ordered BlackBerry maker Research in Motion to pay $147.2 million in damages for infringing on a patent for remote management of wireless devices, RIM announced Saturday.

Edison, New Jersey-based software firm Mformation sued RIM in 2008 in US District Court in San Francisco, claiming it had disclosed details of its technology to RIM during licensing discussions.


After choosing to not buy a license, RIM modified its software to include Mformation's patented systems allowing companies to manage workers' mobile devices from an enterprise server, Mformation said in its complaint.

In its verdict released late Friday, the jury directed RIM to pay an $8 royalty for every mobile device in the United States connected to a BlackBerry enterprise server.
 

theevilsharpie

Platinum Member
Nov 2, 2009
2,322
14
81
BB10 adds Seri like functionality to dev alpha

http://crackberry.com/rim-quietly-adds-siri-functionality-latest-blackberry-10-dev-alpha-update

Keep in mind that this is an alpha device so not all is perfect.

If RIM had shifted to Android as their base as soon as it became obvious that Blackberry was hopelessly outclassed, RIM's "Siri-like" functionality would probably be much further along, if not actually in use on shipping phones.

I have no idea why RIM insists on re-inventing the wheel when there's a perfectly usable open-source alternative, particularly at a time when they're rapidly losing market share and bleeding cash.
 
Sep 29, 2004
18,656
67
91
the evil,

What do you think of the BB10 OS compared to iPhone and Droid? You are clearly well researched on the matter since your move as RIMM CEO would be to adopt Android. That means you don't think what RIMM is creating is any good. Please clarify your reasoning as to why BB10 is not any good. Please include hte Flow interface in your discussion.

75% of all phone apps are written in HTML5 or partly so. Point is, 75% of smartphone apps can be migrated to BB10 quite easily.

You do know that BB10 can run many Droid apps correct? There are app omissions such as apps that require GPS APIs. But the process for a developer of a Droid app to get it working on the BB10 is all of a 10 minute process if it is doable. The only thing that RIMM requires is that all references to Droid be removed.

You are saying that RIMM is bleeding cash. Which part of the quarterly and annual reports made you think that? PS: EPS is not an indication of "cash burn"

PS: Part of the reason that RIMM didn't go to Droid is something called market differentiation.
 
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theevilsharpie

Platinum Member
Nov 2, 2009
2,322
14
81
Please clarify your reasoning as to why BB10 is not any good.

The number one reason why BB10 sucks is because it doesn't exist. I don't care how good the interface supposedly is. I don't care if it can cure cancer and end world hunger. None of that means anything, because it doesn't exist. Anything that anyone says about BB10 is pure speculation at this point, particularly given the fact that RIM's attempts at rolling out new product lines haven't always lived up to expectations (Playbook, anyone?).

Meanwhile, the Blackberries that are actually on the market today, right now, are outclassed by Android and iOS in functionality, performance, app availability, and pretty much every other metric I can think of.

The second reason by BB10 sucks is app support. You claim:

75% of all phone apps are written in HTML5 or partly so. Point is, 75% of smartphone apps can be migrated to BB10 quite easily.

Got a citation for that? I have dozens of apps installed on my Android, and none of them rely on HTML5 for any significant functionality, as far as I can tell.

You also claim:

You do know that BB10 can run many Droid apps correct? There are app omissions such as apps that require GPS APIs. But the process for a developer of a Droid app to get it working on the BB10 is all of a 10 minute process if it is doable. The only thing that RIMM requires is that all references to Droid be removed.

Porting an app to another platform involves more than getting the app to work; there are testing and ongoing support expenses to consider as well. Even if BB10 can run Android apps with absolutely no caveats (which I doubt, you even listed a few), there's no guarantee that it will be able to keep up with newer versions of Android. This leaves developers who choose to support BB10's Android compatibility layer in a position where they constantly need to be mindful of BB10's limitations when developing for Android.

Of course, like anything else with BB10, this is purely a theoretical "what-if" scenario. The much more likely outcome is that BB10 won't be supported by app developers because the market share won't be enough to make such support worthwhile, regardless of how easy it might be. Developers go to where the market is, and that's Android and iOS. Palm and Nokia weren't able to attact a developer ecosystem, and the only reason Microsoft has any app developers is because they've been able to throw giant wads of cash at them, something that RIM isn't in a position to do. In this day and age, a smartphone platform without developer support is DOA; what makes you think BB10 will be any different?

You are saying that RIMM is bleeding cash. Which part of the quarterly and annual reports made you think that?

The part where they recorded a loss of over $500 million and 33% drop in revenue for the quarter, which is a substantially accelerated slide from the previous quarter and worse then even the most pessimistic analyst predictions. Or perhaps where they anticipated even further losses for the current and next quarter.

Perhaps "bleeding cash" was the not the right terminology, but my general point stands: RIM is operating at a loss that is increasing every quarter with no end in sight until at least 2013. RIM only has so much cash on-hand to absorb that loss, and I doubt investors will continue to stomach steep losses for that long. Unless RIM changes its fortunes very quickly (or at the very least, stops bleeding), there's a strong possibility that investors will force a sale or a substantial restructuring before BB10 ever sees the light of day.

PS: Part of the reason that RIMM didn't go to Droid is something called market differentiation.

RIM can use Android as a base platform while still differentiating its offerings, particularly since a large part of the Blackberry "experience" is made up of services. This would allow them to stay on a modern smartphone platform and give them at least partial access to Android's ecosystem. For an example of how this would work, see the Kindle Fire.
 

goog40

Diamond Member
Mar 16, 2000
4,198
1
0
HTML5 is so good that Facebook decided to abandon it and re-write their iOS apps in Objective-C. No new functionality, they just had to re-do their app since the HTML5 version performs terribly.

One of the Facebook engineers said the new application has been built primarily using Objective-C, the programming language used to build applications for iOS. Many of the components of the current version of the Facebook app are built using HTML5, the Web-based markup language.

The current version of the app is essentially an Objective-C shell with a Web browser inside. When it comes to speed, this is like putting the engine of a Smart Car in the body of a Ferrari.

Applications that are predominantly HTML5 render most of the components of an app as a Web page, pulling images and content from the Web directly into the application. Objective-C takes the opposite approach, taking full advantage of the hardware in the iPhone and then building most of the functionality directly into the application so it has to collect less information from the Web.

I had the opportunity to see the as-yet unreleased iPhone application, and it is fast. Blazing fast. The two engineers I spoke with said the new application is being tested by Facebook developers and is expected to be updated this summer.

Don’t get too excited, though. The new Facebook app looks exactly like the old one. Facebook hasn’t changed the design, but rather focused on speed.

In late 2011, Dave Fetterman, an engineering manager at Facebook, told an audience at Facebook’s f8 developer conference that the company had chosen to build its apps predominantly using HTML5 so that it could take advantage of reusing programming code across multiple mobile platforms.

This proved to work for developers at Facebook, reducing the amount of work they had to do across mobile apps, but has backfired for users, who have seen the app stretched to its limits as more functionality has been added over time.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/27/facebook-plans-to-speedup-its-iphone-app/
 

jpiniero

Lifer
Oct 1, 2010
16,334
6,822
136
Apple deliberately cripples the HTML engine outside of Safari to prevent exactly what Facebook tried to do.
 

rsutoratosu

Platinum Member
Feb 18, 2011
2,716
4
81
What was their reasoning?

Free phones wooot! half the people already have iphone/android..

So instead of just letting people BYOD, we now forced everyone to have a BB.

What users are doing
- Not carrying the BB, still use iphone/android for email.
- Fwd the BB # to their iphone/android.

People would rather pay and use their own data plans than to carry the free bb phones.

A few people ask about multiple exchanges accounts on BB, which doesn't work so they dont want to use it at all.
 

The-Noid

Diamond Member
Nov 16, 2005
3,117
4
76
NEW YORK TIMES TO NO LONGER SUPPORT BLACKBERRY APP. RIMM US

Pot meet kettle, you're black.
 

Lifted

Diamond Member
Nov 30, 2004
5,748
2
0
I've been receiving a bunch of these lately. Seems like everyone in the company is expected to send out a newsletter asking any remaining customers to hang-in-there until BB 10 arrives.

BlackBerry Connection
Enterprise Edge Newsletter

A Message from Robin Bienfait, Research In Motion Chief Information Officer

Research In Motion® (RIM®) is a company that many people and brands rely on. Given the volume of change we're currently going through, it's understandable that RIM is getting a lot of media attention right now. We are facing a few challenging quarters as we approach the launch of the BlackBerry® 10 platform—and we know there is much work to be done. What's important is that we have a clear direction, we are pivoting rapidly, and are absolutely committed to achieving our goals.

We acutely understand the strategic importance of RIM's network to our customers, and remain devoted to upholding our long-standing history of providing this service reliably. The RIM network has supported our customers for over a decade, and our global messaging infrastructure remains a competitive advantage.

Many changes have been made to help ensure a strong and healthy future for RIM—we are focused on our priorities and keeping our line of sight on innovation. We've made radical shifts in top-level leadership to drive focus, reduced management layers, engaged in cost-cutting initiatives, and we have a renewed dedication to innovation via the BlackBerry 10 platform. We plan to continue this focus throughout fiscal year 2013 and in particular to meet the goal of saving $1 billion in costs. The path forward is clear, and we are confident in our experienced leadership team.

I regularly meet with customers, and I understand that you need to be certain that we can perform and deliver. With a firm plan of action underway for RIM, demonstrable fiscal responsibility, and a deep history of security and support for enterprise, I firmly believe that we remain the clear choice for enterprise customers. I recently did an interview that is published on the BlackBerry for Business blog, answering some "tough questions" from enterprise customers, and I invite you to check it out for more information.

Your feedback is part of our daily evolution and growth, and we wouldn't have it any other way. Thank you for your support!

Robin
 
Sep 29, 2004
18,656
67
91
I've been receiving a bunch of these lately. Seems like everyone in the company is expected to send out a newsletter asking any remaining customers to hang-in-there until BB 10 arrives.

Sounds moer like they are addressing the fear that people think RIMM is going under. Not hte financial truth at all.
 
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