No matter how successful and rich Steve Jobs was, he never rested on his laurels. There was always the next innovation, the next new great consumer product to be developed. The same can’t be said of Bill Gates or the two now-ex CEOs of RIM, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie.
That RIM lasted as long as it did borders on a miracle, because the two CEOs were anything but far-sighted. One of them doubted that the iPhone would be a success, saying that no one wants a personal computer on their phone. RIM also had a chance to be the first to bring a tablet to market, a couple of years or so before the launch of Apple’s iPad, but the CEOs axed the idea.
Newsflash: people not only want a personal computer in their pockets, but also a vast library of books, music, movies and TV shows, newspapers, magazines, and ready access to the web.
The Blackberry phone never lived up to any of those demands. To this day, browsing the Internet is a pain, and the number of apps is so small that making phone calls and sending emails or messages is pretty much all anyone can hope to achieve on a BB phone.
The launch of the Playbook tablet was a major disaster. Batteries on the 16GB model don’t hold power for long, forcing people to buy the more expensive 32 and 64 GB models. The Playbook didn’t have a native email application either. One had to tether it to a BB phone to use the tablet for email. Its biggest claim to fame, that it came with Flash capability, was heavily advertised in TV commercials, yet users complain of major issues with viewing videos on YouTube, City TV and many other sites – it is one of the leading Google searches related to Playbook issues.
Only recently was it revealed that RIM didn’t offer an email app because the company hadn’t managed to figure out how to put email on the tablet. Apparently, the way RIM email servers are set up, each registered user can access the network only from one device. If they had email on the phone, there was no way of also using it on the Playbook. How to port the popular BB Messenger service to the Playbook was another problem that RIM failed to solve.
That revelation by itself is proof that the company really doesn’t have a clue (anymore) about what it’s doing.
Soon after the Playbook’s launch, RIM promised to improve things, such as by providing an email app and the option of using Android apps on the tablet. If everything goes according to plan, all this will finally be released in February, almost a year after the original promise. Sorry, but by the standards of today’s tech market, that simply isn’t good enough. And even if RIM releases “Playbook 2.0″ in February, which is still highly doubtful given the company’s track record, it’ll be a case of too little, too late – especially so since Apple will release its much-improved, slimmer and lighter iPad 3 by the end of February or early March.
As Margaret Wente explains in her column, the two former CEOs were more interested in using their personal wealth for their own edification – building mansions or trying to purchase hockey teams. If they had spent this much time and energy on creating smartphones and tablets that people actually enjoy using, the company wouldn’t find itself on a precarious precipice today. (Many expect RIM to be history by the end of this year.)
The new CEO Thorsten Heins, who spent some time at Siemens in the past, may not be the right person for the job. Siemens had major problems with its mobile phone division, and if Heins was anywhere near that unit, he’ll be very likely to drive RIM into the ground.
Heins has also indicated that he’d like to license the new BB 10 operating system to other device makers, the way Android is licensed by Google to Samsung or HTC. While this strategy has worked quite well for Google, because it was never really tied to the hardware side of the process, for RIM this would result in a large-scale dilution of the brand.
It will be interesting to watch Heins and the direction in which he takes the company, but if investors’ and analysts’ initial reactions are anything to go by, he’ll face an uphill struggle against all odds. RIM’s share price keeps dropping, despite the good news of the departure of Lazaridis and Balsillie.
The more time passes, the more likely it is that RIM will eventually be broken up and its patents snatched up by the big players like Apple and Google. A takeover by or a merger with another IT company is increasingly out of the question at this time, as any such company strong and solid enough to consider such a risky move has already ixnayed the idea.
RIM … RIP?