- Posts tagged Blackberry
- Explore Blackberry on posterous
Five Stars, When Nobody Else Could Garner Four
While the competition peaks at "about average", Apple passes "better than most" to be "among the best".
Not sure the word "among" is even necessary.
The Answer Is No.
Sales not as fast as expected… a Samsung executive revealed those figures don’t represent actual sales to consumers. Instead, they are the number of Galaxy Tab devices that Samsung has shipped to wireless companies and retailers
According to one source who’s seen internal HP reports, Best Buy has taken delivery of 270,000 TouchPads and has so far managed to sell only 25,000, or less than 10 percent of the units in its inventory.
RIM has quietly cut its sales expectations for the BlackBerry PlayBook after its disappointing sales from the spring
New estimates for sales of Motorola's Xoom tablet--available since late February--are in, but even the most optimistic predictions are scarily small and pale next to the iPad 2's first-weekend sales numbers.
RIM Sr. Executive: "I have lost confidence"
Almost every project is falling further and further behind schedule at a time when we absolutely must deliver great, solid products on time. We urge you to make bold decisions about our organisational structure, about our culture and most importantly our products.
I'm not quite sure how to take this letter.
On The One Hand
It's not bad advice, though more or less just a compendium of things the tech press has been saying. It's somewhat "easy" to suggest that RIM copy Apple's strategy, not so much because Apple is successful, but because RIM controls the whole widget, like Apple, so they could do many of these things.
However, when Apple entered the market they had little in the way of obligations to others beyond the exclusivity with AT&T, for which they were granted the power to create the phone they wanted. RIM is in no such position. RIM has included or excluded features at the carriers' whim (like all other phone makers) since the beginning. Maybe they could have broken free of that in their heyday (though they showed no sign of wanting to), but they certainly can't now given their weak position.
Bottom line is much of this plea calls for RIM to do things they cannot do given their current state. Like it or not, they'll need to start small.
On The Other Hand
There are time one doubts its authenticity. A flood of checkpoint issues to work on, with no prioritization, isn't very sound. The "how" and "when" is a hell of a lot harder than the "what". For example, sure Apple's ads are cool and RIM's are not, but who really believes RIM is where they are now due to their ads?
Focusing on the end user sounds great (you hear Google talk about it a lot, too). The problem is these companies' end user is not the person actually using their product. For RIM, it's the Enterprise and the carriers. The letter acknowledges this, but as I said above RIM is not in a good position to break those ties. I think RIM's current relative weakness must be a factor in how they choose to proceed.
Finally, the letter in some ways is too dramatic. Asking the CEOs to step down and replace themselves, and even naming names (e.g. "the guy responsible for the 9530 software"). If RIM corporate culture is as bad as he says it is, then this guy's gone and he knows it. If that's true, it's easy to toss out a letter bomb before leaving. He must have known it would "leak". It may help him land a better job elsewhere, but I hope Apple doesn't pick him up.
Where To Go
Personally, I think the first thing RIM needs to do is take a serious look at the Blackberry Bold 9900 due shortly and make sure it's the best BB ever made (like the iPhone was "the best iPod ever made"). It's ridiculous that they're releasing phones today that look like those from four years ago, but they can at least ensure it kicks ass on the BB scale and make every Crackberry user want it. That's how Apple started their turnaround. Embrace the loyal users, stabilize things, then go from there.
ZDNet: Alas, poor RIM and BlackBerry, we knew them well
How much worse can this possibly get? You get one of your key executives on record to talk about QNX replacing BlackBerry OS 7 sometime in 2012. Never mind the fact that the first BlackBerry OS 7 device, the Bold 9900, hasn’t even shipped yet.
RIM has certainly come a long way since the days they didn't know anybody who could type on a sheet of glass.
I can't get RIM's PlayBook to do anything, but it'll kill the iPad. [u]
Without being able to test the OS it is hard to say just how good this device is. What I can say is the the battery life, anti-reflective coatings on the screen and the weight of this device are highly impressive. If they keep these features in the production model it will kill the iPad.
A comical hands on with a RIM prototype PlayBook. It's comical because he can't really do anything with it, yet he concludes that just three things will allow it to "kill the iPad".
[UPDATE:] In looking at the article's pictures more closely (i.e., on my desktop machine), I agree with a comment that this is just a mock prototype (it's black tape around the edges). Makes more sense now, too. Yep, I got caught and posted too soon.
Another Useless iPad Competition Table
While there's still quite a few missing details, and nary an unit in site for us to try first-hand, we've still got a sampling of specs for this little guy to go tête-à-tête on the quantitative field of proverbial battle
No, you don't.
Price, availability (can I buy the thing?), cellular specifics (not just if it's built in, how do I get a signal?), and a robust platform (not just the OS, but the app and developer environment) matter.
Price: From the early stages it looks like most of the iPad's competitors will be on the outside looking in here. And a lower price that requires a 2-year contract is not the solution, given Apple offers pay-as-you-go 3G.
Availability: Obviously, you can buy an iPad now (millions already have); the others are lagging, if available at all. Not sure why this is seen as OK by many tech sites, as if the product announcement itself "counts", and iPad sales will slow as a result.
Cellular: Details on this is critical. As near as I can tell there's nothing like Apple's buy-only-as-you-need-it offering for the iPad. Do most people really want another $70/month device?
Platform: Apple's is second to none right now. You could argue for Android, but remember that many Android tables will not have access to the market place anyway, and I don't see Google doing much to change that. The others may become robust and well-supported platforms, but they're not yet. Besides, Google has already said Android is not optimized for tablets, so clearly that's not the direction they want to go.
I realize the tech press is anxious for the iPad to have competition. They've been that way for some time now. But real competition can't be manufactured by the press—which is what they're attempting to do—no matter how many spec tables they put together. Sure, it may impress the geeks, but geek support is not required for success in this market.
In short, there's not enough data on the fledgling iPad competition market to make any calls on whether these will be viable competitors in the market place. Indeed, if one were forced to draw conclusions only from what's currently known, one would have to conclude the iPad clobbers them all, not that it's somehow a horse race.
Now all they need is a hardware overhaul, a touch screen and a modern OS.
The change partly addresses one of the most common complaints of navigation on BlackBerries.
RIM Publishes Non-Denial Denial.
Apple's attempt to draw RIM into Apple's self-made debacle is unacceptable. Apple's claims about RIM products appear to be deliberate attempts to distort the public's understanding of an antenna design issue and to deflect attention from Apple's difficult situation. RIM is a global leader in antenna design and has been successfully designing industry-leading wireless data products with efficient and effective radio performance for over 20 years. During that time, RIM has avoided designs like the one Apple used in the iPhone 4 and instead has used innovative designs which reduce the risk for dropped calls, especially in areas of lower coverage. One thing is for certain, RIM's customers don't need to use a case for their BlackBerry smartphone to maintain proper connectivity. Apple clearly made certain design decisions and it should take responsibility for these decisions rather than trying to draw RIM and others into a situation that relates specifically to Apple.
Above is the full statement from RIM Co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie.
Sounds harsh, yet nowhere in that torrent of words do they deny the Blackberry Bold has a death grip issue. Good thing, too, because it most certainly has one.
I have an iPhone 4 and can reproduce the death grip; once I knew how to hold it, it was easy. But I also own a BlackBerry Bold 9700. Guess what? Now that I know how to hold it, I can reproduce the issue with it, too. In fact, my tweet about it came many hours before the Co-CEOs published their non-denial denial.
But what about the Bold owners who swear they can't reproduce it? I guess we pay as much attention to them as the iPhone 4 owners who say they can't reproduce it, either. Fair's fair, right? I'd like to point out that I've never dropped a call on my iPhone 4 or Bold, both sans cases, so the real world counts for something.
It's a shame that even with two CEOs RIM weren't smart enough to let this go, choosing instead to get all puffed up while not even denying what they presumably got puffed up about in the first place.
Meanwhile, the reason RIM "has avoided designs like the one Apple used in the iPhone 4" is because Blackberrys are relics from a half-decade ago. The most "innovative" thing RIM's tried to do in five years is add a touch-screen to a track-ball based OS, and they failed miserably. Both times. This is why they've been giving their phones away—buy one, get one free—for nearly a year.
The good news for RIM is that people are so disinterested in their out-of-touch (pun intended) relic that the Bold won't get near the attention Apple's innovative iPhone has. This is one time where RIM's inferior product will actually help them.
