Unless you have been living under a rock, you've might have noticed RIM has been taking a lot of heat for their struggling business. For some time RIM has been losing market share to iPhone and especially Android. Yet RIM seemingly did nothing but stick to their old ways and trudge along. Threatening the company from going to obscurity.

According to BGR a senor exec in a desperate plea has written an Open letter to RIM. BGR claims to have verified that the letter truly is from a high ranking exec at RIM.




Open letter to BlackBerry bosses: Senior RIM exec tells all as company crumbles around him (http://www.bgr.com/2011/06/30/open-letter-to-blackberry-bosses-senior-rim-exec-tells-all-as-company-crumbles-around-him/)


To the RIM Senior Management Team:

I have lost confidence.

While I hide it at work, my passion has been sapped. I know I am not alone — the sentiment is widespread and it includes people within your own teams.

(more... (http://www.bgr.com/2011/06/30/open-letter-to-blackberry-bosses-senior-rim-exec-tells-all-as-company-crumbles-around-him/))



RIM’s Response to “Open Letter” (http://blogs.blackberry.com/2011/06/rims-response-to-open-letter/)

It is obviously difficult to address anonymous commentary and it is particularly difficult to believe that a “high level employee” in good standing with the company would choose to anonymously publish a letter on the web rather than engage their fellow executives in a constructive manner...
(more... (http://blogs.blackberry.com/2011/06/rims-response-to-open-letter/))

To be frank, it's quite sad as I loved my BB when I had one. I ended up jumping ship a year ago because I saw no effort in BB product and watch as Android phones and iPhones got better and better, while BB pretty much stayed the same.



=X=

I somehow think that the BB fan in our household (hint: it's not me!) is contemplating going over to an Android device when the BB gives up the ghost. He has been so annoyed by some issues and has just about given up even attempting to get some features to work properly.

One trick ponies.

In this cut-throat market, you can't expect to survive when you churn out 90s-looking devices when Android & Apple have sexy phones with all the features and apps you'll ever need. It is innovate or die, and RIM seem to be doing the latter rather than the former.

One trick ponies.

Perhaps indeed.

However, RIM and Blackberry is the absolute best in terms of what they do for their traditionally targeted customer base:

the corporate world.

IMO/IME, a huge part of the struggle RIM now faces is their desire to capture the retail consumer market. They want more but from the perspective of an average retail consumer, sure, iPhone and the like are a helluva lot sexier than BB. Duh!

As for their positioning in the corporate world? I see no evidence of mass, organization-wide defections away from RIM to either Apple or Android or any other internal corporate mobile platform.

Sure, lots of company's are "looking" at iPads and iPhones. But most all of this is just vanity driven, with the requests coming from senior people who simply want a schmexier-looking device.

When the time for the real heavy lifting comes, and more rational decision makers are heard, I believe it will still be the continuing VITAL, MISSION CRITICAL concerns of overall device and infrastructure security, tight integration, platform and device stability and extensive corporate IT control which will rule the day. And in these areas, BB/RIM is without peer.

Similarly, I see no corporate entities rushing out to ditch their WinXP/WinXX desktops in favor of iOS or Linux, certainly not in any widespread manner.

Eventually...perhaps - who knows? But big business is universally conservative, especially in terms of their technology deployments. They HAVE to be. So any widespread paradigm changes in the corporate world will come crawling and with significant pain and after endless rounds of consideration.

Of course, all of the above is simply a reflection of what I have observed in the corporate world and in my current discussions with other corporate folks.

:)

I will throw this out though: As a corporate BB user for 10+ years, I challenge anyone to compose more accurate, speedy and typo-free emails than I can while on my BB against those using a touchscreen device like iPhone, etc...

I am talking about average users of both RIM and touch-input devices of a similar size [no unfair BB vs iPad comparisons and no superfreak geeks].

;) :D

Oh, I can "type" pretty fast and typo-free on my android via swype. Like this. Pretty fast, I guess, when compared to typing with fingernails on tiny keyboards...

^ lol. OK, fair enough since this is a test we will never be able to try in person :)

Still, I have yet to meet anyone in real life who can match me for speed and accuracy and in my business I meet A LOT of people from all walks of life and nearly all levels of professional achievement. And I myself am not even that particularly fast - just pretty well familiar with BB after so many years usage.

To be fair [and to prove I am not such an old fashioned curmudgeon stuck on BB], I have seen amazing vids of speedfreaks using touchscreens. :) But I gotta believe that those folks, just like people who can speed type at 70wpm and higher are in the vast minority.

One area where touchscreen input is clearly superior though is for Asian based languages - for those, the swipe recognition is without peer from what I have observed. Here in HK people can be incredibly quick while writing Chinese characters.

And FWIW, no fingernails typing for me ever on BB keyboard lols My fingers are normal average male size and I keep my nails nice and tidy. :p ;) :D

@Namekuseijin, just out of curiosity, have you ever tried a Blackberry keypad?

Response

I remember a few years back everybody I knew in the corporate world owned a BB, sure they thought iPhones where sexy, but old reliable was the blackberry. This was true for myself. I had a storm and thought there was no ways BB physical keyboard could type as fast as me.

I resisted the android platform or iphone ad they had no appeal to me. However out if frustration with RIMs lack of meeting users demands i jumped in the android platform. Wow the difference is night and day. I thought nothing could compete with the sure type technology only to find keyboards like swype and swiftkey knock the socks of of suretype.

Right know what I see in the corporate world and at large is that no one deceive dominates the scene, like BB once did. There are iPhones,BB, and androids(more android than any other device)

Did your know the world record for typing was broken using swype? And while you discredit those folks as being freaks have you ever considered why there is no similar record for bb users despite the fact that every bb owner swears that they are lightened fast on their preferred device? The point I'm making here really isn't about platform superiority but humans nature inclination to obscure the truth instead if changing.... which is the point of this post.

Btw this was typed on my android device.

It looks like the story continues to unfold. BGR has now posted a series of email they received from RIM employees.

After we published the article, RIM responded. It wasn’t pretty, and it really didn’t address a single point that was made by the original plea.
(more... (http://www.bgr.com/2011/07/01/more-letters-to-rim-employees-rally-alongside-anonymous-exec/))

After reading the emails posted by BGR I guess it's no surprise the company is struggling.

=X=

I like RIM. I would like to see them make a strong push into the market again, instead of stagnating and kind of fading out.

I can't imagine anyone buying a Blackberry these days, unless they're really attached to the brand from years of use.

Response

I remember a few years back everybody I knew in the corporate world owned a BB, sure they thought iPhones where sexy, but old reliable was the blackberry. This was true for myself. I had a storm and thought there was no ways BB physical keyboard could type as fast as me.

I resisted the android platform or iphone ad they had no appeal to me. However out if frustration with RIMs lack of meeting users demands i jumped in the android platform. Wow the difference is night and day. I thought nothing could compete with the sure type technology only to find keyboards like swype and swiftkey knock the socks of of suretype.

Right know what I see in the corporate world and at large is that no one deceive dominates the scene, like BB once did. There are iPhones,BB, and androids(more android than any other device)

Did your know the world record for typing was broken using swype? And while you discredit those folks as being freaks have you ever considered why there is no similar record for bb users despite the fact that every bb owner swears that they are lightened fast on their preferred device? The point I'm making here really isn't about platform superiority but humans nature inclination to obscure the truth instead if changing.... which is the point of this post.

Btw this was typed on my android device.

Love the intentional irony here.

It was intentional ... right?

First things to do when you move to a touch screen keypad: turn off the heinous autocorrect, slow down and give what you've written a quick proof-read.

@X: Hey, it's all good man. :) I simply don't engage in forum pee-ing matches - rather I just call 'em as I personally see 'em, day in and day out, as viewed through the lens and perspective of many years of mid-relatively high-level corporate IT decision-making processes.

Let's leave it at that, shall we? :)

And point taken about the world record for typing vs swiping. I was not aware of this so thank you for the info - I am now better educated.

Still, a world record is quite irrelevant out in the real world, no? How many people do you know that drive at 200mph? Or who can eat 50 hotdogs in 5minutes? I was specifically referring to the demonstrated typing skills of average man/woman on the street users of BBs and touch devices.

And until the mass defections away from RIM actually start in the corporate world, I remain unconvinced of BB's imminent demise. Having said that, I fully acknowledge that BB is far from perfect - I never said it was and quite frankly, I am way too old and cynical to be a fanboi. Indeed, I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiments expressed in the open letter you linked to.

cheers man,
-les

I see no evidence of mass, organization-wide defections away from RIM

So here is what the corporate world says about RIM:

Right now, right now, the salient fact is that most of us use BlackBerry because we have to. We don’t love it; there’s no “wow factor.” Business suites, including IT managers and security-minded customers like investment bankers, buy the BlackBerry because it promises security, reliability, and – a very important ongoing asset for RIM – integration, as BlackBerry synchronizes seamlessly with office email.

Yet even those brand assets are fading. Quality has decreased over the years, vitiating the brand in one of the areas that matters most – reliability. If RIM remains the industry-leader for seamless integration, it’s because the company still has the best enterprise servers, supported by savvy support personnel who know those servers inside and out.

But it is a near certainty that other manufacturers will catch up on this front as well. When they do, will RIM have added anything to this core asset that will keep them a competitive step ahead? If not, it is an additionally perilous omission since tomorrow’s state-of-the-art enterprise servers will likely be designed for Android phones and iPhones as well.

http://blogs.forbes.com/richardlevick/2011/06/30/rims-apple-moment/


RIM hasn't released a new BlackBerry model for nearly a year as it tries to rejuvenate a product line that's been criticized as under-powered and stodgy.

It's seen its share of sales in the benchmark North American market fall to 16.5% at the end of the first quarter of 2011 from 41.3% in the year earlier period, according to research firm Gartner.

In April, RIM issued a first-quarter profit warnings saying it saw weaker-than-expected sales in the U.S. as well as Latin America, one of the fastest-growing markets for the BlackBerry in recent years.

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110616-714130.html

I think RIM needs to make changes, but at the same time a lot of that letter read like "why can't we be more like Apple?" even when it doesn't quite...make sense. The bit about no one buying Product B just because it had features that Product A didn't made me laugh -- apparently this letter writer needs to meet me, because that's pretty much how I make ALL my buying decisions. (See also, my blog post about how the N2 unveiling caused me to rush out and buy a Sony reader. Ha.)

Definitely RIM needs good dev tools and relationships. I agree with that 100%. But some of the rest of it... like how many people want Flash, really?... yeah, no. I disagree with that.

I loved my BB. Biggest reason I dropped it for Android was lack of apps, particularly a good eReading app. Otherwise, I loved the phone intensely. (And, incidentally, an RIM letter riffing on Android tickles me so very much.)

So here is what the corporate world says about RIM:



http://blogs.forbes.com/richardlevick/2011/06/30/rims-apple-moment/




http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110616-714130.html


Indeed, all good points and stuff I personally have seen and am aware of.

RIM ain't perfect. The Forbes article you cite specifically confirms what I mentioned re: corporate world concerns in this area. And indeed, if RIM continues to operate in the same manner as they have been, without making some significant changes, sure, things could go very very badly for them.

Which is one reason why I agreed with the sentiments of the open-letter originally posted in thread 1.

This is like the old "ohhh, the sky is falling" parable because again, I do not see any mass corporate defections away from RIM going on at the moment.

Do you?

Sure, if things don't change at RIM, and if other companies can indeed offer more compelling, secure, cost-effective and viable platforms and devices, then of course, anything can happen.

But that day ain't today and prolly won't come for years, if ever.

Because this type of sea change presupposes that:
- RIM does absolutely nothing in the interim;
- other companies indeed come up with corporate solutions that beat RIM on every single level and actually can convince conservative IT heads to take a shot at something totally new.

And of course, I agree totally with the conclusion from the Forbes article cited:

"RIM has its own well-defined and sufficiently sizable customer base. If it focuses on appealing to those customers now for all the reasons they became customers in the first place, RIM can have its own Apple moment, reasserting dominance in a very significant market sector."

Bottom line: 7billion people on planet earth...bound to be differences of opinion. Even here on MR :)

cheers and I am outta this thread...
-les

I am not impressed with iPhone/iPad. Swype might be good for a general person but what is good for everyone is not good for pros. For those who are used to fast touch-typing on real keyboards the lack of tactile feedback is a disadvantage.

There is no doubt that BlackBerry keyboards are much better. But is this superior feature alone enough to succeed or even remain in the market?

BlackBerry needs to add something innovative to their devices. For example, it could be security. Nowadays we need hundreds of access codes and passwords etc. to log in websites. It leads to vulnerable password reuse. For online banking Europeans often use a special hardware device called a code calculator that is used to generate an access code (electronic signature) for each transaction. If BB could implement something similar in their phones for general purpose use, it would make internet much safer. It would require a hardware chip that is not hackable and is protected even in case of a stolen device. It would not be cheap but for BB it would be doable considering their corporate position and ever increasing need for better security. If they can do this then they have no need to copy i-anything.

I suppose I'm very fuddy-duddy but I am reasonably happy with my Blackberry. I received a new one last week when I made an insurance claim on my old, lost one. Other members of my family have iPhones and Android phones, but I see no need to change at present. I don't feel the need for lots of apps on a phone. (I'm still wonderstruck at the whole convenience of having a phone you can carry around with you from country to country. :D)

My very first mobile phone was a large brick that just made phone calls. At that time I carried around another large brick that was a PDA (a Psion, for the record). So it was a noticeable improvement when I got my first phone that also had PDA features (only one brick to carry instead of two). I got my first Blackberry some years ago and was pleased to have something from which I could access and send emails and also use the navigation function to get around.

I'm open to persuasion that I need iPhone-type apps. Any suggestions?

I got a Blackberry when I started my new job. Out of all platforms I probably wanted Blackberry the least, but as the phone is free and all the usage is free I'm not going to complain about it.

I don't mind it now that I've used it a bit and I do find it fairly useful, but its inability to work as a wifi hotspot pisses me off to no end. Also, the Kindle app for Blackberry outside of US does not allow for purchasing and doesn't even have a search function. Grrr!

But I make do and am dealing with it.

Sorry - nothing to actually contribute to the discussion. :D

My anecdotal evidence is iPhones are taking over in the corporate world a LOT faster than some of you think. Not only are we 90% converted but so are the customers and vendors who I see. Apparently RIM thought the same and they are sinking in quicksand.

That thing they do well, corporate communications? So does the iPhone, now after a few OS revisions. Technically I had a better MS Exchange connection than my BB brothers for a while there (views into folders and such).

They reacted far too slowly to the obvious shift in the market. They are not alone. Look at Nokia, arguably a mightier company worldwide. Microsoft failed but not because they were late. They were early and not only was the hardware weak but they did not understand the value of a smart phone's eco-system (App store) as differentiated from regular PC's (shrinkwrap software). Remember Ballmer laughing at Jobs when he announced the iPhone? One of those classic moments in history now.

I myself lost a little money on RIMM stock because I had more confidence they would react to the market (back when they WERE the dominant corporate communications device). I was sure disappointed but I could see their ship sinking and got out way before the latest drops in share price.

They are dog meat now. They might as well start producing Android phones.