Circling the RIM Faster... Contract manufacturer to stop making Crackberries in 3 months

[freeradical]

Even large companies with a diversified product line can stumble badly. I've worked with Nortel contractors in the past when they installed telephone switches. They also made other stuff as well, such as multiplex and fiber optic transmission equipment.

Here's a DMS-100 switch - once very common...





Hi, we're Nortel, and we're in ch 11....

[silvarios]

cbelt3 wrote:
Gleeful ?

Not really, mostly sad. They had a good product. But they squandered it, and Apple and the Droids have eaten their entire business. Business history is filled with these sort of things.

I meant places like BGR and other "media" outlets. iOS and Android are nice enough, but neither is perfect. Far from it actually. If I had to choose from the two, I'd go with Android. The iOS app store is one of my least favorite "features" of the platform. Even if Goog Play isn't my favorite app store either, at least I have the option to load apps from other sources.

I miss the days with at least four competent phone platforms.

[ztirffritz]

hal wrote:
I admit to taking some joy in seeing this.

I watched the founder desperately try to use his fortune to force the NHL to sell him a team so that he could move it to his home province. His bashing around left some long term damage.

I see RIM as just another iomega... a one hit wonder that assumed the world would stand still so that they could continue to reap fortunes. Biz history is full of these successes turned failures. This is just another one...

I have no love lost for their former CEO who tried to steal the Pens, but I do feel for their employees. The management team should have seen this coming. They should have done something. Instead they let out a collective 'meh'. If they had jumped on the touch-screen bandwagon early after the iPhone hit the streets and leveraged their position they could have produced a me-too product that just held its ground. Instead they did....nothing. Absolutely nothing. For several years. That is inexcusable. Pathetic. I could have done a better job managing the company. Hell, they could have read the writing on the wall and licensed the software to Microsoft.

[silvarios]

ztirffritz wrote: If they had jumped on the touch-screen bandwagon early after the iPhone hit the streets and leveraged their position they could have produced a me-too product that just held its ground.

Not true. RIM did release a me too touch screen product (the original Storm) and it was a piece of crap. I would argue this is where RIM stumbled.

The me too distraction cost RIM in consumer
good will and may have irreversibly damaged the company's image. RIM's later touch phones were better received by reviewers, but I bet regular people were hesitant to dip their toes in the water. Junky hardware and lackluster buggy software is a hard experience to forget.

For all the talk of the many limitations of the original iPhone (crappy camera, no 3G, no copy and paste, no MMS, no third party apps, limited app switching interface, modal notifications, etc.), at least the features present more or less functioned properly. Apple designed a solid enough foundation to build from whereas Blackberry's first touch screen phone was an umitigated disaster.

[SDGuy]

silvarios wrote:
... Junky hardware and lackluster buggy software is a hard experience to forget...

Then how do you explain the success of Windows all these years?!!??

:jest:

[vision63]

SDGuy wrote:
[quote=silvarios]
... Junky hardware and lackluster buggy software is a hard experience to forget...

Then how do you explain the success of Windows all these years?!!??

:jest:
Developers - Developers - Developers - Developers - Developers - Developers - Developers!!!

[GGD]

I wouldn't be surprised if some other phone manufacturer buys them out just for their remaining customer base, and then transitions those customers to whatever device they make.

The RIM customers are all probably starting to think that they're going to need to transition soon given this news, and if someone makes that transition decision for them and makes it reasonably painless, they'll probably go with it.

Microsoft/Nokia comes to mind as companies in search of phone customers.

[NewtonMP2100]

.....wait so, CRACK really is whack.......???

[sekker]

RIM's downfall is going to sit next to all the other companies where hubris prevented a real change during a time of transition.

Nokia has a similar problem in that they, too, had all of the same data but failed to execute fast enough. I think the problem with Nokia is that they really wanted to be bought by M$. Their new leadership has publicly criticized Nokia engineers for not owning iPhones and Samsung Android devices - demonstrating that they live in a bubble and truly do not understand the competition.

RIM's leaders were in clinical denial the whole time, up to and including their letters of resignation. They simply could not see the difference between the Storm and an iPhone. Even that was excusable. But not understanding that Android and windows phone were also going to be competing directly in their marketplace was tragic.

I find the loss of RIM very sad. They were a cool tech company and not from Silicon Valley. Competition is good.

[DharmaDog]

My brother is a sales director there, and seems intent on going down with the ship.

He had to lay off everyone underneath him (12 people), and take on their responsibilities. But they gave him a promotion and a retention package after the carnage.

I've been asking him for 2 years when he plans to bail. I don't think he's leaving until the doors are boarded up.