Ramblings - RIM
[update]After I had lunch I sat down to read through some post on my twitter feed and found this one here. Seems like RIM was being sued over its enterprise software and so far is losing that fight. Brings new light to my suggestions that they adopt Windows Phone and let MS handle Enterprise component.[/update]
I said I could probably dedicate a topic to this. And I have decided to as I feel it is unfair to simply label RIM as dead in my prior post without filling that in a bit.
RIM suffers from the same problem a lot of companies do. They are completely out of touch with the people they are servicing. RIM has 2 loyal groups of customers left; Enterprise and people who love physical keyboards.
On the keyboard front, BB10 refocuses their OS on touch screen devices. If they haven't confirmed it I believe that they would still ship phones with their world class keyboards, but I have yet to see a touch optimized OS in which keyboard still feels like a first class citizen. And on the Enterprise front WP8 presents a device which will outclass their current offerings especially since many Enterprises already have MS infrastructure.
The reason why touch screens are more popular on Android is NOT because the touch typing experience is better than the physical keyboard experience. A device that makes you want to touch it is a device where an ever present keyboard takes up valuable real estate and sliding keyboards make the keyboard feel secondary on the device.
The more delayed BB10 is, the less time the company will have to react to negative reactions before they run out of customers and cash. With it being delayed again, and this time past the holiday season they will be releasing at a time when sales are at their softest to begin with (people generally have and spend less cash in Q1 on consumer products as it is right after Christmas). Basically, if they could have it ready before Christmas they would likely see more initial sales than they would in Q1 2013 which not only gives them more time but also likely a little more influx of cash to last a little longer and fix grievances with devices at launch. However, from what they have shown of BB10 so far, it offers no one any reason to switch platforms to the best the could hope for is to retain their current customer base which isn't proving large enough to keep them afloat anyway.
I think they have 2 ways they could have gone (but is likely now too late) that could have saved them. A switch to Android or a switch to Windows Phone. Most people will look at the Android suggestion and call it smart and call the Windows Phone suggestion dumb. I feel the opposite is true and let me explain.
The pros of Android are that it is free and a Java derivative. Black Berry OS runs Java apps as well, so there will be a lot of Java talent inside of RIM making it a natural choice. Android has massive popularity and there are probably many Android users that would love to see Black Berries keyboards and BBM come to that platform and it could probably revive it in the short run.
The cons of this approach are that Android is the worst enterprise platform around which would kill off that huge sector of their business unless RIM backdoored something into a custom Android OS that leverages their existing infrastructure (which has a bad name after a few terrible service outages).
Bringing their hallmark consumer app, BBM, to the largest ecosystem and one with plenty of competition would ruin its value and it would no longer be a differentiator differentiator. And lastly, Android is the least performant platform on the market and would suffer terribly on the hardware that ships in Black Berry devices. I think after the honeymoon phase they would just be another struggling handset maker. They would limp on doing better than they are currently, but would still die off down the road if they stayed on it.
A switch to Windows Phone (Windows Phone 8 specifically which should GA before the holiday season this year) would be switching from one enterprise class solution to one which will, at launch, be arguably better than their current solution. Given that many of their customers will be running both BB Enterprise software and Microsoft solutions, this presents a value to existing Enterprise customers to upgrade so that they can simplify their enterprise offerings. It also means RIM can drop their existing Enterprise solution and move their customers to one whom at present have a better image. RIM could use what little it does better in the Enterprise sector as bargaining chips to get better deals with MS which would in turn improve MS's offering which RIM phones would benefit from. Further bolstering the value to move Enterprise customers not currently on MS infrastructure to MS and new BlackBerry devices driving up sales.
BBM could be given away for free to RIM handset owners in their own section of the Marketplace. An optional additional source of revenue could then be selling the App to the rest of the WP marketplace at a cost. This would give additional value and brand awareness to RIM WP handsets. Also, while I feel keyboards on touch OSs are wrong... there are people who like them, and in the WP ecosystem, there is no real competition. Bringing devices, especially ones like the Torch to WP would be yet another differentiator in that ecosystem whereas on Android there is a sea of competitors offering physical keyboards.
Further arguments are that to remain competitive in the Android market each handset maker has set the bar by adding outlandish levels of OS customization. So RIM would need to invest likely as much developers in that as they do in maintaining their current OS. And they would need to keep their enterprise infrastructure, so again they are gaining little if anything. But in a RIM - Windows Phone scenario, there is no competitive expectation of a custom OS and the Enterprise functionality it deferred to Microsoft. This allows RIM to reallocate a lot of those resources to developing RIM Marketplace applications, or if there is excess cutting jobs to improve their bottom line.
Also, RIM is also in the tablet market. Android does tablets as well but Google doesn't have a serious contender in the laptop/desktop unified ecosystem vision everyone is driving towards which ultimately means that there are things developers can leverage on Apple and Microsoft systems which Android won't be able to, also again a place where yet another custom Android ROM would be seen as required as a means of differentiating. By buying into WP8, they can also buy into Windows 8 for their playbook line, which would provide another place where they can recover resources from an OS project to move elsewhere in the company or cut costs.
But I fear all of this is but a pipe dream. Their current CEO basically publicly insulted Windows Phone which is not something you would likely do if you were either already secretly working with it or planning on adopting it. All this says nothing about whether or not they are working on Android. But with all of the cuts over the past year I imagine that they are running too lean to juggle both BB10 development and working on Android in parallel.
Like I said before, I think the arguments in favour of adopting WP8 and Windows 8 are too overwhelming to ignore, but I think it is too late for them to invest in WP8 if they want a phone out before Christmas. And RIM looks to be piloted by idiots to have not seen the value in this earlier. It also doesn't necessarily mean abandoning BB10. They could have taken this on to keep the ship afloat until they could divert time and resources back to BB10. It would also set them up to increase their product offerings if they eventually did support both platforms.
I said I could probably dedicate a topic to this. And I have decided to as I feel it is unfair to simply label RIM as dead in my prior post without filling that in a bit.
RIM suffers from the same problem a lot of companies do. They are completely out of touch with the people they are servicing. RIM has 2 loyal groups of customers left; Enterprise and people who love physical keyboards.
On the keyboard front, BB10 refocuses their OS on touch screen devices. If they haven't confirmed it I believe that they would still ship phones with their world class keyboards, but I have yet to see a touch optimized OS in which keyboard still feels like a first class citizen. And on the Enterprise front WP8 presents a device which will outclass their current offerings especially since many Enterprises already have MS infrastructure.
The reason why touch screens are more popular on Android is NOT because the touch typing experience is better than the physical keyboard experience. A device that makes you want to touch it is a device where an ever present keyboard takes up valuable real estate and sliding keyboards make the keyboard feel secondary on the device.
The more delayed BB10 is, the less time the company will have to react to negative reactions before they run out of customers and cash. With it being delayed again, and this time past the holiday season they will be releasing at a time when sales are at their softest to begin with (people generally have and spend less cash in Q1 on consumer products as it is right after Christmas). Basically, if they could have it ready before Christmas they would likely see more initial sales than they would in Q1 2013 which not only gives them more time but also likely a little more influx of cash to last a little longer and fix grievances with devices at launch. However, from what they have shown of BB10 so far, it offers no one any reason to switch platforms to the best the could hope for is to retain their current customer base which isn't proving large enough to keep them afloat anyway.
I think they have 2 ways they could have gone (but is likely now too late) that could have saved them. A switch to Android or a switch to Windows Phone. Most people will look at the Android suggestion and call it smart and call the Windows Phone suggestion dumb. I feel the opposite is true and let me explain.
The pros of Android are that it is free and a Java derivative. Black Berry OS runs Java apps as well, so there will be a lot of Java talent inside of RIM making it a natural choice. Android has massive popularity and there are probably many Android users that would love to see Black Berries keyboards and BBM come to that platform and it could probably revive it in the short run.
The cons of this approach are that Android is the worst enterprise platform around which would kill off that huge sector of their business unless RIM backdoored something into a custom Android OS that leverages their existing infrastructure (which has a bad name after a few terrible service outages).
Bringing their hallmark consumer app, BBM, to the largest ecosystem and one with plenty of competition would ruin its value and it would no longer be a differentiator differentiator. And lastly, Android is the least performant platform on the market and would suffer terribly on the hardware that ships in Black Berry devices. I think after the honeymoon phase they would just be another struggling handset maker. They would limp on doing better than they are currently, but would still die off down the road if they stayed on it.
A switch to Windows Phone (Windows Phone 8 specifically which should GA before the holiday season this year) would be switching from one enterprise class solution to one which will, at launch, be arguably better than their current solution. Given that many of their customers will be running both BB Enterprise software and Microsoft solutions, this presents a value to existing Enterprise customers to upgrade so that they can simplify their enterprise offerings. It also means RIM can drop their existing Enterprise solution and move their customers to one whom at present have a better image. RIM could use what little it does better in the Enterprise sector as bargaining chips to get better deals with MS which would in turn improve MS's offering which RIM phones would benefit from. Further bolstering the value to move Enterprise customers not currently on MS infrastructure to MS and new BlackBerry devices driving up sales.
BBM could be given away for free to RIM handset owners in their own section of the Marketplace. An optional additional source of revenue could then be selling the App to the rest of the WP marketplace at a cost. This would give additional value and brand awareness to RIM WP handsets. Also, while I feel keyboards on touch OSs are wrong... there are people who like them, and in the WP ecosystem, there is no real competition. Bringing devices, especially ones like the Torch to WP would be yet another differentiator in that ecosystem whereas on Android there is a sea of competitors offering physical keyboards.
Further arguments are that to remain competitive in the Android market each handset maker has set the bar by adding outlandish levels of OS customization. So RIM would need to invest likely as much developers in that as they do in maintaining their current OS. And they would need to keep their enterprise infrastructure, so again they are gaining little if anything. But in a RIM - Windows Phone scenario, there is no competitive expectation of a custom OS and the Enterprise functionality it deferred to Microsoft. This allows RIM to reallocate a lot of those resources to developing RIM Marketplace applications, or if there is excess cutting jobs to improve their bottom line.
Also, RIM is also in the tablet market. Android does tablets as well but Google doesn't have a serious contender in the laptop/desktop unified ecosystem vision everyone is driving towards which ultimately means that there are things developers can leverage on Apple and Microsoft systems which Android won't be able to, also again a place where yet another custom Android ROM would be seen as required as a means of differentiating. By buying into WP8, they can also buy into Windows 8 for their playbook line, which would provide another place where they can recover resources from an OS project to move elsewhere in the company or cut costs.
But I fear all of this is but a pipe dream. Their current CEO basically publicly insulted Windows Phone which is not something you would likely do if you were either already secretly working with it or planning on adopting it. All this says nothing about whether or not they are working on Android. But with all of the cuts over the past year I imagine that they are running too lean to juggle both BB10 development and working on Android in parallel.
Like I said before, I think the arguments in favour of adopting WP8 and Windows 8 are too overwhelming to ignore, but I think it is too late for them to invest in WP8 if they want a phone out before Christmas. And RIM looks to be piloted by idiots to have not seen the value in this earlier. It also doesn't necessarily mean abandoning BB10. They could have taken this on to keep the ship afloat until they could divert time and resources back to BB10. It would also set them up to increase their product offerings if they eventually did support both platforms.
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