RIM CEO On What Went Wrong 299
AZA43 writes "After releasing some very ugly financial numbers in late June, BlackBerry-maker RIM went on a media blitz to downplay the significance of its latest earnings and counter increasingly negative media attention. ... But a new Q&A with BlackBerry chief Thorsten Heins offers a unique take on what exactly went wrong at RIM — Heins blames the company's downfall [partly] on LTE in the U.S. — and he actually seems genuine in his answers."
A peek into the mind of RIM's upper management.
Re:LTE? How about Android and IPhone (Score:5, Interesting)
On both iOS and Android the telephony and normal OS are quite seperated. It has nothing to do with open or closed source, just that they treat it as yet another device like the touch screen or the camera. I am not sure how BBOS handles it, but to not do it that way would be stupid.
Even ICS needs closed source drivers for GSM/CDMA radios and often wifi. Hardware companies as always are a huge PITA. The big news with ICS is that all Nexus devices save for Sprints Galaxy Nexus are supported via closed source but publicly available drivers for this kind of hardware. The Nexus S 4G(sprint) and the Verizon branded Galaxy Nexus were the two just recently added back into the AOSP fold.
Re:Apple happened (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/12/27/rim.thought.apple.was.lying.on.iphone.in.2007/ [electronista.com]
Re:Apple happened (Score:5, Interesting)
The IT goons as you call us were the ones quite often pushing for the death of RIM.
My and my goon coworkers pushed to have RIM banned from our company. If you have our company buy you a device you can select an iPhone or Android of your desire. If you BYOD same rules apply if you want any support. We aren't total dicks, we just will not do better than best effort. If it a RIM device comes in and does not work out of the box or they have any trouble at all we just suggest they return it for something else.
We have saved tons of time not having to deal with repushing servicebooks, pulling batteries, and restarting the whole BES server. Which is a PITA since it takes out email for all its clients.
Re:LTE? How about Android and IPhone (Score:4, Interesting)
RIM needs to give up on the OS.
Due to the traditional enterprise focus of Microsoft, I personally think it would be in RIM and Microsoft's favor to join forces by releasing a few good WP8-powered Blackberrys.
Re:Apple happened (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Apple happened (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh yeah, that's one of the all-time great bits of self-ownage.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/wrong-dvorak-blames-getting-screwed-over-apple [networkworld.com]
^^^ Exactly (Score:5, Interesting)
We only just recently turned in our pagers at work ( ! ) Meanwhile I own a Samsung Galaxy 2S (Sprint Epic Touch) which is better than 90% of the phones I see during the day. One concern is proprietary info on personal devices - most phones will play friendly with exchange servers, but companies don't want you to have that stuff on your personal device if you are fired or quit.
I think part of the reason isn't enterprises being "stuck in the past", but they are more cautious when deploying new systems and approving software for use.
The economy is another factor. The machine at your desk is already paid for.
New machines vs. someone salary - it's better to keep your job.
Re:LTE? How about Android and IPhone (Score:5, Interesting)
I was mostly happy with my BlackBerry Bold, but the real issue for me wasn't apps, it was the shitty web browser and small screen. The killer app for smart phones is the Web. If they managed to get that to work seamlessly, they would have kept their customer base and app developers. What did them in was that the Torch was a buggy piece of crap. The UI for email and contacts and all the other communication functions is already superior to the the iPhone.
Re:LTE? How about Android and IPhone (Score:4, Interesting)
I've said it elsewhere, but what I think is that they need to release an Android phone that has the same back-end security as a BlackBerry. Sure, let users download apps and play with them in user land, but launch a corporate app and its content is locked down and protected. This is what Trusted Computing is for. (I'm not saying I would buy one for myself, but were my company to issue a phone I had to carry, having it act like a standard fully-featured Android phone plus have corporate support would make it better than a regular Android phone for sure.)
Re:LTE? How about Android and IPhone (Score:2, Interesting)
Posting anon
Actually, RIM has traditionally designs EVERYTHING themselves. At one point they even designed the physical radio chip. The idea is that if you do everything in house, you can maximize the optimization of each layer (and it works, that's why BB have such long battery and, as least as far as the radio stack is concern, very low call drop rate compared to that Q company :) ).
But of course, due to multiple reasons (which doesn't actually have to do with incompetency), they fell behind.
Re:LTE? How about Android and IPhone (Score:4, Interesting)
You are at 100% CPU and RAM usage. The user tries to do something that needs more CPU. Do you drop the old task, which is no good he needs that done, or the new task which cannot complete in time?
You schedule it this way.
1) The user always has a high degree of responsiveness. The system never lets itself get to 100% CPU and RAM unless the user hasn't been hitting anything for while.
2) The task the user is currently looking at gets priority and all the CPU and RAM it needs
3) Other tasks split up the remaining generally using something like a most recently used bias. Their may be a notification when a large task in the background completes.
RTOS don't magically create more CPU, they may even effectively decrease it, but that's not the point. What they do is make sure the system is always responsive to the user regardless of load. And absolutely things like postponing tasks are key.