Charismatic

Sacked 11% of their workforce in a "shake up", since then their share price has declined over 60% and profits have halved from last year.

I think this emphasises something armies have known for hundreds of years, strategic retreats only work when you have somewhere to retreat to. I’ve observed this a lot scenario a lot, companies that seek to cut costs actually get themselves into more trouble often than companies that try to match their competitors.

auzdafluff

It's in serious trouble.

There's a number of factors that are causing it. There's a trend known as the consumerisation of IT – essentially the shift from IT telling you what phone you'll be using for work and providing you with the boring beige box you do most of your work on, towards you using your own smartphone – which of course, you chose – and using your own laptop/tablet etc, especially when outside of the office.

That's hurting RIM because a lot of its sales came from enterprises buying phones for their employees. Now that's happening less and less, it's competing with other smartphone companies, who often have much consumer-enticing features.

However, the real thing hurting RIM is Apple. Most of the people who used to use RIM for email now use Apple or one of the million and one Android-based Apple clones. Even the one area RIM had a massive advantage in with regards to the consumer market – BBM – is taking a battering because Apple and co are releasing Apps that do a similar job.

RIM can do well, but it has to drop its Playbook tablet. Had the iPad not existed, it – as almost every other recent tablet – would have been pretty good. But compared to the iPad, it's a poor quality device.

It also needs to embrace its last true strength – its keyboards. Nobody else does mobile QWERTY keyboards like RIM. It's going to be a much smaller market for RIM, but it's going to have to accept the market's moved on and begin focusing on its future life as a niche company.

However, if it keeps trying to play with the big boys, it's going to go bust.

Bahtatboy

Interesting--my two boys (aged 19 and 16) have Blackberries because they're the norm in their social groups, both having moved away from iPhones. That's in UK. Out here I don't think I know anyone who uses a Blackberry.

As to Charismatic's point ("companies that seek to cut costs actually get themselves into more trouble than companies that try to match their competitors"), oh so true. Business is like a three-legged stool, the legs being Employee Satisfaction, Customer Satisfaction, and Profits. Make changes which affect adversely any one of those legs, and the stool falls over. Cost-cutting might initially help keep profit where it needs to be, but pretty soon it'll have an impact on both employee and customer satisfaction, and then you're screwed.

Bob

They're considering a HP style fire sale to clear stock, which says quite a lot as they don't have that much else in reserves.

Doesn't help that the have a rather shit grasp of UX :/

norsk

BB's are in general bad build quality (they used to have the best corporate replacement policy I have come across, but it must have cost them a fortune), based on software full of bugs (which never tend to get fixed), has an extremely bad UX (especially compared to iOS and Android), and to top it off they have lost their USP (portable email and BBM) for the last couple of years. The final straw will be once all their trusted corporate customers abandon ship.

I think private customers have long since given up on RIM I think (except for those few who love the small hard to push keyboards and feel all nostalgic about the whole thing)..

I will not be crying. I bought a BB a couple of years ago and gave it to a friend for free after 3 weeks as I just couldn't stand it..

Charismatic

Blackberry tapped a market with innovation, then they stopped innovating…then they got into trouble and fired some of their innovators.

I’m not trying to pour water on cost cutting measures (though I’d like to think companies would always be looking for ways to use labour more efficiently, not just when revenues need growing) but you can’t afford not to invest in development if your competitors are innovating.

Actually what is interesting about their big rivals (Samsung, Google, Microsoft and Apple) is that they have been locked in patent wars about technology and they are hungry for innovation and ownership of intellectual property. They can’t work fast enough developing new technologies and have resorted to buying intellectual property from other companies to protect their market positions.

Charismatic

Sony Ericsson took the same path in ‘08 that RIM is taking now, don’t think they have fared much better.

flares

I think my Blackberry is the best thing since sliced bread. But I am not that techy.

mentalist

Who or what is RIM? Never heard of them.

Welivehere

RIM is the company, Blackberry is the product / brand....

"Research In Motion (RIM), a global leader in wireless innovation, revolutionized the mobile industry with the introduction of the BlackBerry® solution in 1999"

Norm_uk

I spent the last three months getting my Blackberry to synch with the latest version of Microsoft Outlook. I am fairly tech-savvy but this was a challenge akin to finding an honest politician.

RIM's tech support informed me that my particular phone doesn't support Outlook's latest version - in other words a phone designed to be primarily for business doesn't work with the world's most popular business software...but only my model.

Eventually I found third party software which fixed the problem but it was a shock after coming from Ericsson and Nokias which are piss easy to set up and synch.

I would buy an iphone but they do look a bit gay and wouldn't fit my racist skinhead image...

N.

norsk

alfrombarking

The RIM hate is now out of proportion

I suspect most of these anti RIM journalists are Apple fanboys.

soon as I started seeing school children with Blackberries I knew its appeal would shift downwards.

Now their core consumer group is split between really young people and business people. So identifying a middle ground could save them.

but the hate out there is just too strong

NorthernLad

I do not like me Blackberry at all, saying that the Torch was a huge improvement on the Bold. I expect that, like many other people, I am given the BB from work because of cost (especially in the Middle East). That said, I work for a large American company and they are giving out iPhones in the US now as business pricing plans there are not as criminal as they are here.

typical

RIM fell out of fashion. It costs a lot of money to run a BES and other firms have solutions that only cost corporate IT departments time. Security may or may not be as good, but it seems good enough now.

BBs are just too expensive for what they are.