If Amazon Fire succeeds in cannibalizing sales in the low cost tablet range (Fire being a wrapper for all of Amazon’s digital media products in the cloud), Playbook stands to offer nothing other than the device. RIM seems like a company coming more and more across as a company that has no pragmatic leadership or vision. It is both unable to draw a bead on where the market is going, or its competitor initiatives, and is increasingly made irrelevant in the smartphone market.
I don't work and have never worked for RIM. However, from what I've read of it lately, I find it fascinating. From what I can tell, what happened was:
* RIM was a brilliant company with a ton of talented engineers and a few managers. RIM released cool products and became successful.
* RIM instituted a promotion policy based largely on seniority. This ticked off a lot of talented engineers and over the years they started exiting. At the same time it attracted the kind of middle manager who likes this kind of policy.
* RIM became bloated with management (two CEOs? two CEOs!), lost the last shreds of its talented engineers and started spinning out of control. RIM is large, and like any large spinning object, it is hard to tell that it's spinning if you are standing on it. The management cannot tell that they are out of control.
There have been two recent developments that lead me to believe RIM definitely needs to get out of this market.
The (obvious) first is the Kindle Fire... This device will succeed and will cannibalize sales from tablets not called iPad (and maybe the iPad too). Plus the Fire is virtually the same hardware as the playbook at $200 with a thriving ecosystem.
The second is the state of Android on the Playbook. It just came to light (through some very damning articles) that virtually no android apps will work on this device. The idea was gimmicky and the execution on that idea seems to be even worse. There's no android utopia here.
I hate to say it, but RIM has no other option than to sit and watch. Maybe they can maintain a decent niche in the corporate world, maybe not. The reality is that they are not in control of their destiny. Their survival depends entirely on what their competitors choose to do.
If RIM gets out of this market I think they're done. The next generation is going to be about ecosystems. Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google are all offering seamless access to their data, through their cloud offerings, across a wide range of devices. More than ever people are going to be using a single brand or OS just because it is easier, which is what post-pc devices are all about. There won't be many that will have a RIM phone and have an iPad or Amazon tablet just because data management will be a pain.
I very much agree with this. The interesting effect is platform lockin because of unportable data. In the 90s and 00s plaftform lockin was a function of the availability of software on specific platforms. Now it's data...
Will there be services for porting data between platforms?
>Will there be services for porting data between platforms?
All of these companies, except Google, will do their best to block it until governments intervene. Even with Google allowing this, it will be extremely difficult to do so and virtually no one will go through the effort. What if a third party app you use doesn't exist for the device you want to switch to?
Even in regards to carriers the average user considers it a bigger headache to switch carriers than to stay where they are, even though they're unhappy. Humanity, regardless of their plight, having difficulty adapting to change.
Full disclosure, I live in Canada-land, not the UK.
My perception has been that contracts with telecoms providers is largely a North American phenomenon, or at least, isn't as prevalent in the UK. IIUC, pay as you go is the big thing over there.. if only it would catch on here as well maybe people wouldn't consider it such a pain to switch carriers.
> The next generation is going to be about ecosystems.
Exactly. They have probably missed the boat, but I think the right path for them would have been to create enterprise grade Android devices with special features (better encryption, phone integration, BBM, etc). There is a very decent space there to be exploited - and they tried - but doing it on their own was always going to a high risk venture. They at least should have hedged their bets.
I'm kind of shocked to see that in the end with the Playbook they went with such a generic manufacturer that Amazon was able to walk in and say "we'd like to order one of those too". That tells me they basically ordered off the shelf and had little proprietary input in to the hardware design. Which in turn says that RIM has no core differentiating expertise there and thus is essentially doomed to compete in the commodity hardware space - but attempting to do so at premium prices.
> it is kind of enjoyable watching them crash and burn.
I have very much enjoyed watching their fall...it's a strong case of schadenfreude. For some reason, their refusal or inability to innovate has me giddy. I suppose they represent (to me) a large corporation run by old guys who don't "get it" - and they're failing. Microsoft is in the same boat, but it's tougher (only slightly) to argue that they are falling.
I'm halfway through this bag of metaphorical popcorn, I hope I don't run out before RIM dies completely.
Somewhat agree, but more due to my frustration in general with RIM products. Their user interface was completely abhorrent. If there is at least one thing that the iPhone ushered in, it was to demonstrate that the ability to use it without some arcane "click on the wonky button with 9 dots, then go to settings, obscure word that has nothing to do with fonts, pixel depth or some other odd entry" path will likely succeed.
I cannot stand using my blackberry to do anything substantial as it just seems to want to discourage me from using it. I can't imagine how these devices appear to a non-techie.
As a Canadian, technology enthusiast and former RIM employee, it actually saddens me. A company with so much potential, so much talent quickly fading into the mist.
I wouldn't mind seeing Jim B removed and Mike L as Chairman of the Board. The shake-up they desparately need must occur at the top level. In the most recent layoffs, I've had friends and former colleagues in mid-management and lower positions let go. I'm not sure who thought that was an effective strategy to turn the company around. FAIL!
There's a difference between turning the company around and buying enough runway to do it in.
RIM's profits are down, due to the fact that they aren't selling as many devices as they used to. This means they don't need as many people to make and support the devices, as well as that they don't have as much money to keep paying them to do things that aren't needed.
Layoffs are always a touchy subject, and the corporate adage is usually that they have to challenge the remaining employees to "do more with less". The unspoken side of that is that they honestly don't have as much to do as they did before, and so in reality, they're doing the same with the same, proportionally.
Those employees are wasting there time. If you work for a company that should go out of business and it doesn't (or takes a very long time to) then you are wasting your time producing a product that isn't valued by the market. I want to make things that people need/want.
It's not like there is a terrific economic climate. These people have families to think about, saving up for retirement and paying the bills. People that depend on them. This is real life. Not all of us get to have our own successful startup or become the next Jobs, Gates, Bezos or Zuckerberg.
It's very easy to assume you know what people want. The four people I mentioned above were as much a success because of timing as much as they were because of their genius.
Well - except for the fact that Jobs was successful over, and over and over (Apple Round 1, Pixar, Apple Round 2) - and took over Apple at a time when it looked like it's best days were behind it. I'd suggest that Jobs was successful with Apple Round 2 _despite_ his timing.
What boggles my mind is how excited about RIM products their CEO is in public announcements. He did it with the Playbook but even worse he's done in every time in the past, most notably, with the Torch. He EXPECTED 1 million + sales opening weekend. Really? Launching on a single carrier (AT&T) sharing with iPhone and Android devices? And then he was DISAPPOINTED that they only sold 100,000 units opening weekend. Which, actually, I think he was lucky to get.
I am still amazed a company known for e-mail / communications and loved for their keyboards decided to copy the "piece of glass" crowd. It just seems like the play would have been something more akin to the Psion Series 5 instead of the iPhone / iPad. Concentrating on communications (evolution from e-mail) and collaboration would have been a better play and more in their abilities.
Or that they would produce a "business tablet" that can't actually do email or calendar/contacts PIM without tethering to a BlackBerry. Those features are what RIM was famous for!
If you could be a fly-on-the-wall of any tech meeting in history, somewhere in my top 10 would be the one that decided the tethering business. I just don't understand how no one went "hold up, this is not going to work, the iPad has e-mail".
Someone may have said that and then was likely shouted down by others thinking that they could use the Playbook to drive sales of their phone division. Still a laughable decision though.
This seems entirely possible. One of the big problems at large companies is that political clout is often tied to how much revenue your division bring in. That makes sense, except that whatever group is making the "new/next thing" is almost always much smaller revenue than the current mature business. So they lose those kinds of arguments.
Wow. So that's what's behind the innovator's dilemma? Your competitors will cannibalize the market share of your existing products, when your own staff could have gotten there first but their part of the organization didn't have the authority to get away with it?
I think it's more complex than that - there's also usually more risk associated with the newer technology, and it's often lower margin (not in this case.) So you have this new division saying, we're going to build a product that cannibalizes our main business, and makes less money per customer... and that's just not very easy to sell.
So instead, someone who doesn't have your old business comes along and builds it instead. And you end up either buying them, or fading away.
at first, i also thought it was stupid that they required you to tether it to a blackberry. then i realized that i kind of like that fact that you don't need to buy two $80 / month data plans (though tethering a blackberry by bluetooth kills the battery) for each.
too bad the playbook was too little, too late, and too expensive. hope they take a cue from HP and drop the price massively to clear their inventory
That logic doesn't really hold water - every other tablet on the market has Wifi access and can do native calendaring and e-mail. And with the Wifi it can almost always be tethered to a phone as well. So for most users, they don't need two 3G data plans at all.
Additionally tablet only 3G data plans start at 20$ in Canada, and even the largest plans don't come near 80$.
Jesus Christ yes. I want a keyboard on my phone. Unfortunately RIM's software sucks, and everyone else's keyboards suck, so I'll be settling for a piece of glass.
I confess this is an Ad Hominem Circumstantial, but what would you say if you and your channel partners were sitting on a mound of unsold inventory? You’d talk up the future of the device while discounting the price in the hopes of quickly clearing the channel without alienating the people you need to sell your phones. Meanwhile you’d cut production off and when just about everything is sold, then you officially exit the market.
This doesn’t mean that they are existing the market, just that denying the rumour doesn’t really prove they’re still 100% behind it.
There's so much mainstream consumption based not only on the quality/usefulness of a company's products, but also on the public perception of that company. Just think about Apple and its ability to turn everything it touches to gold. It becomes a self-reinforcing cycle unless something drastic happens to shift the momentum in the other direction (e.g. Netflix now suddenly is starting to go in the other direction after their recent poorly-received decisions).
Given RIM's downward momentum in the past couple of years, I don't think its a surprise to see its latest products do poorly. In the tablet industry, they needed something that was revolutionary or at least something very very good in order to have a fighting chance. Releasing something mediocre that lacked some basic features (native email) that Blackberries are based upon portended doom. The $500 price point guaranteed it.
Look at the recent launch of RIM's Torch 9850. Received lukewarm reviews at best (CNN destroys it) amid lots of hype from RIM. Can you guess where this is headed?
I don't really know what RIM can do to reverse their continuing downfall, but I think it starts with acknowledging that their proprietary OS is not going to work and get on the Android bandwagon. Then hope to get lucky with a blockbuster product.
At least they still have most of Corporate America...for now.
It is utter shit in every way except how nice a screenshot touting the “cards interface” looks. No, not just sluggish hardware. Buggy multitouch. Crap copy/paste. Garbage browser with rendering bugs aplenty (on popular websites, even). Boring, Linux-like system icons. Each "panel" of system settings launches a sluggish app. No Dropbox or 1Password apps (cheap shot, but ecosystem matters).
They basically outsourced everything right? Apple's iPhone was the result of scaling down what was supposed to be the original iPad (not to mention the Newton). Amazon's commitment to books and server technology carried over nicely into the Kindle. I think a large part of the first mover advantage myth comes from the unquantifiable drive and passion that goes into thinking hard about a product before a first prototype launches. These companies have a complete vision that they whittle down and polish to get that first product out. They have a clear path for the future and the flexibility to adjust because they've got a head start overcoming obstacles.
I just wonder what their main "vision" was. Seems like they suffered the same paralysis as Motorola and Nokia. "We make mobile phones" mentality. Did they just assume that the future was ever thinner profit margins compensated by sales volume? That people would gladly sacrifice added functionality for added battery life and the convenience of hardware buttons?
I think their vision used to be "Be good at email and good for businesspeople"
At some point, they said "Hey, these touchscreen things are doing pretty well, let's get into the consumer market." But they had no idea how, and they've been releasing weak phones on a weak software ecosystem ever since.
On the other hand, if they'd stayed in their original market, I don't think it would work out much better. Doing enterprise features nicely is great, and could sell a lot of devices. But Apple's "touchscreen on a little computer" model is flexible, and all it would take is an enterprise focused software update from Apple or a few well written apps from a third party.
Competing against Apple's vision and manufacturing skill is going to be difficult to do, and in the long run I don't see RIM being one of the companies that manages to do it.
As a Canadian, it's difficult to watch them fail so flagrantly, but they haven't really done enough to succeed so the company deserves it IMO (even if the low level employees don't).
I do like that there has been talk of their next generation of QNX devices supporting Android applications, but that seems like but one step in the right direction, after having taken half a dozen steps in the wrong direction.
People say this, but I disagree. They shipped with working Flash and no email. If you look at their actions instead of what reporters and RIM's marketing team say, I think it's very difficult to call the Playbook a "business orientated" device.
All of their commercials even boasted about the Flash capabilities and the HD-movies-that-keep-playing-when-you-multitask-away. Business tablet? Yeah right.
I'm not sure how important the hardware is. It has to meet a minimum level of functionality/quality, but that's it. The software is what's going to sell the tablet. The Playbook's and Fire's software is vastly different.
