I've been thinking about RIM lately and I think they basically had chances to turn themselves around, but took neither.
The first was in '08/'09 - shortly after the iPhone. Some companies (Google, Samsung) saw where the industry was going, made the appropriate decisions and are now profiting handsomely. In hindsight, that was the right time for RIM to acquire QNX and start on BB10, which might have done very well had it come out in 2011. With decent hardware, a solid OS, their own style and riding on BBM (big at that time), they might have staked a sustainable 10-15% chunk of the market.
The second chance was '10/'11, around the time of Nokia's Burning Platform Memo. This is when RIM started on BB10, but as we see now, it was already too late. Had they bet heavily on Android and on their strengths (security, gov & enterprise sales), they might be doing pretty-well today.
These are always more easily seen looking from the future into the past, than they are in the past looking to the future.
Few companies, with the market share RIM had, see threats as 'near term'. Fewer still have a deep appreciation for the entirety of the technology stack and the time it takes to move things. This is especially true of young executives but can happen to anyone.
RIM's technology stack matured over many years, from idea to business juggernaut. What that tells you is that moving the stack is also going to take years, so if you're experienced you start looking 5 - 6 years out not 1 - 2 years out.
When the iPhone hit, and Google was close behind, that was a huge signal. But Ballmer and Microsoft dismissing it, was a huge counter-signal. If you're an enterprise IT company, and the biggest company in Enterprise IT in the market place is dismissing the iPhone as a 'fad', you might be inclined to believe them rather than your own people who are saying "this is a threat".
At some point you get behind the power curve. In airplanes once you are behind the curve there is literally nothing you can do which will prevent you from eventually crashing. The same it true in companies. RIM apparently decided early on that Microsoft was a more credible indicator of the future than Apple/Google for their marketplace. And they have paid the ultimate price for that.
nit, but Ballmer did not dismiss the iPhone, he dismissed the $500 on contract iPhone. And he even said "it may sell very well". Here's the actual video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U
I know it's become fun to pretend like Ballmer dismissed the iPhone but I have a hard time watching that video and seeing anything like that.
Microsoft's phone team did react promptly. Probably not many people remember that they were originally planning to ship a "Windows Mobile 7" product which was an evolution of WM6. They axed that and started over, and the result was Windows Phone 7.
They messed up a lot of things both before and after that point (sometime in 2009 I think?), but there was a definite change in course in reaction to where the market was going.
Why would Microsoft have to "support" the iPhone way back then? I'm pretty sure they would have supported it if they had ready iPhone competitor back in the days, but given that they didn't have it, the only logical thing to do about it is to ignore it and silently working on catch up, which is exactly what they did.
At the time Microsoft was the single largest supplier of IT software to enterprises. Part of the appeal of Blackberry phones was they integrated well with the systems used in the enterprise.
In that environment, if Microsoft starts supporting iPhone like they support Blackberry (Exchange integration, a sharepoint app, what have you) then it is a strong signal that Microsoft has looked at the iPhone, and what it represents, and has decided its going to be a 'big deal' in the Enterprise space going forward.
It's an imperfect signal to be sure, but often treated like an 'outside opinion.' Using an example from my own history, I was trying to get NetApp to build a filer on the Opteron hardware and the lead marketing guy wouldn't believe the AMD64 stuff was "real" until Dell started shipping a server using it. That was a tool he was using to validate (or invalidate) my argument that AMD64 was the future of the x86 architecture.
So RIM, seeing Microsoft's response, might use that to "confirm" an internal opinion that the iPhone (and perhaps smart phones in general) wasn't a serious threat.
I of course have no way of knowing one way or the other, but I've seen it happen that way, and the hypothesis fits the actions as we know them today. I presume they could have started/done the BB10 "anytime" but only started once they had collectively internalized the threat to their market. So by that reasoning I speculate they didn't believe it to be a threat until much later.
I was toying with the idea of posting snark suggesting that RIM's problems are attributable to Microsoft villainy. Truth is stranger than fiction however, and here I find a thoughtful HN intellect assigning some of blame to Ballmer.
RIM got caught out by a change to corporate culture - bring your own device - largely driven by economic decisions in response to the recession combined with a restructuring of the mobile market and a generation of hardware that leapfrogged RIM's product line in terms of status appeal.
What happened is Apple changed the market and Ballmer's dissing of a competitor did not mean that Microsoft scaled back its research efforts or gave up its cultural bias toward long term plays.
In airplanes once you are behind the curve there is literally nothing you can do which will prevent you from eventually crashing. The same it true in companies.
I'm going to say the physics of aerodynamics is not a good analogy for business competition.
A good metaphor here is angle of attack. If you try to fly at too steep an angle of attack, you just stall. If you say right out of the gate that you want to raise a $5 million series A round, unless you're in a very strong position, you not only won't get that but won't get anything. Better to start at a low angle of attack, build up speed, and then gradually increase the angle if you want.
Seems the anologies come in handy, though. He's basically saying momentum needs to be respected. And key inflection points, once missied, may not re-appear.
They lost me for two reasons. The first was updates and bug fixes. For example on my BB pausing the music player resulted in the battery being drained flat in less than an hour. They fixed that but of course the update never made it my phone and carrier. Add in 5 minute boot times, and randomly finding it locked up and needing a physical reset. Or the survey on a website about what your favourite app was to daily reboot your phone!
The second reason was them not standing behind their hardware. The warranty was a year. The bluetooth module failed after one year and 3 months, and it turns out this happened to a large number of people with that model. Tough luck.
There is so much choice these days, that narrowing down is done by using any reason. That is why I wouldn't touch another BB and as a recommender to my friends they don't either. This kind of thing can be fixed, but it requires a long track record of redemption. (HTC is also on the do not touch list due to a lack of sustained redemption.)
Plus, global roaming. It's kinda sad nobody ever thinks about it…
BlackBerry was able to provide worldwide flatrate roaming (well, they could, but it was up to each carrier to sell it as a product or bill each user to death).
Now, BB10 loses that capability. In fact, BB10 is completely and absolutely dumb when it comes to be an enterprise phone: multiple massive inboxes with different providers/technologies, many contacts, busy agenda, roaming and travel planning.
BlackBerry could have been today the perfect companion for people who really mean business. Or, at least, a very powerful one (people sometimes don't mind carrying two phones). But with an utterly expensive, beta-grade[1] device that does none of these things, I can't find a single reason why someone wouldn't pick an Android or an iPhone. Even for business.
Unless I'm mistaken, every cell phone maker has only a standard one-year warranty. I agree with all the points you made. I just don't think a longer warranty would have helped them.
They could have addressed the issue and it doesn't matter if it was the warranty or some other mechanism. eg all they had to say was that if bluetooth failed on that model then they would replace the phone or give you a certain amount of credit towards a new one.
Bluetooth is critical functionality for anyone who commutes by car, and those who talk a lot. It isn't some rarely used side feature. A phone where this stops working is very notable, a huge pain and you are forced to resolve it almost immediately.
>"...their strengths (security, gov & enterprise sales), they might be doing pretty-well today."
Yeah, while pretty much everyone witnessed and understands the failure of RIM to respond to the iPhone and hardware/OS missteps it might not be so well known that they were failing to properly service their existing strengths at the same time.
In my experience, lots of Enterprise/Government folks really didn't and likely still don't care about touchscreens and apps (for their employees), just email/PIN.
Problem was, the sometimes painful software/support plus lengthy, too frequent SRP outages ensured that BES and the Blackberries connected to them would be abandoned at the first opportunity.
They should've moved to Android by 2011, when it was obvious that it was going to become dominant. If they'd built touchscreen phones with slide-out keyboards (like the Motorola Droid) and built an Android-based OS that also included their proprietary messaging and email solutions, I imagine they would be quite successful now.
Not sure if you are tolling, but to move to Android by 2011 they would have had to start in 2010 or 2009. The first Android release was September 23, 2008 and you remember how ummm "good" it was right? And on so many devices too and "obvious" that it was going to become dominant. So they could either keep printing money with their existing OS they own and know or migrate to an unknown and new operating system made by some other company with unknown problems...
I think they would have had to drive two different product lines, their traditional BBs (I know a few people who still cling to theirs) and some kind of AndroidBB. But marketing that and differentiating the two lines would have been a royal mess.
Yeah, I really worry about Waterloo. The city is basically a company town. If Rim folds, all the geeks could roll up their tracks and head for Toronto or the USA, leaving the city broken. I mean, they'd still have the university...but that's not enough.
This is an empty, useless comment full of hot air, and using swear words does nothing to support the poor assumptions and reasoning that you made.
The "best" devices will never sell without marketing. And if RIM does move to Android, that signals that they gave up and tried to stave off their decline/death by exploiting the Android market. Not to mention that with the competition, RIM has even less of a chance.
I recommend thinking of a unique comment/argument that doesn't repeat what is already said. If you cannot think of one, then please don't post a useless comment that turns this into a Reddit thread.
Half of your comments on HN so far are meta comments about how bad other comments are. You will not have a good time of it if you continue down this path. Stay on topic.
I mainly browse HN to read good/stimulating discussions and submissions, to expand my knowledge, to see other users' reasoning, to develop and maintain a improvement/scientist attitude, and to try to maintain a good quality experience for other users. I'm not here to "have a good time" - if that's what you mean.
But I'm noticing a trend in decreasing submission and comment quality, and I don't know if other users realize that or if they are ignorant of it. HN is becoming more "average" everyday, and I feel that more and more readers are commenting with ignorance, unfounded assumptions, and generally bad arguments overall. In short, a lot of the comments are useless/inaccurate/invalid. I'm sure you notice it as well? How are we supposed to address this issue?
If it's frowned upon to post meta-comments (on HN or any forum or article), then I wish there was a service or feature (not restricted to HN) that allows people to submit/receive feedback and constructive criticism on their comments and diction.
You see many people using words such as "obviously", "only", "completely", but this category of words (degree/intensifier adverbs) is improper/inaccurate to use many times because of the unfounded/unsupported assumptions that they imply. It make me cringe every time I see that. It's an identifying feature of a bad comment, or one that could be better if more effective diction were used.
And improperly using those words puts a severe hole in the argument, but people still treat these types of comments the same way as valid ones when they shouldn't.
Update: I think HN may want to implement the scoring system used on Slashdot to evaluate posts/comments based on relevance, usefulness, information, or insight. This way, there will be no need to post meta-comments to attempt to correct negative behavior that results in the degradation of the community and the decreasing insight and relevance of posts.
The first was in '08/'09 - shortly after the iPhone. Some companies (Google, Samsung) saw where the industry was going, made the appropriate decisions and are now profiting handsomely. In hindsight, that was the right time for RIM to acquire QNX and start on BB10, which might have done very well had it come out in 2011. With decent hardware, a solid OS, their own style and riding on BBM (big at that time), they might have staked a sustainable 10-15% chunk of the market.
The second chance was '10/'11, around the time of Nokia's Burning Platform Memo. This is when RIM started on BB10, but as we see now, it was already too late. Had they bet heavily on Android and on their strengths (security, gov & enterprise sales), they might be doing pretty-well today.
I hope the Waterloo area survives this well.