4 ms·

RIM Must Switch To Android Now, Before It's Too Late

32 points by keltex 16y ago

jeffclark 16y ago
Obviously the entire article is fluff, but there's one thing that sticks out as just wrong: "No one who buys BlackBerry products actually cares about the BlackBerry OS." Has this guy ever talked to a Blackberry owner? They seem to be some of the most loyal cell phone owners around. Everyone talks about switching to an iPhone or whatever, but (from the article): "RIM is still selling plenty of BlackBerry devices -- thanks to international expansion and big sales at carriers."
- dmix 16y ago
  I believe this article had the basis that the reality of the market is changing. So while Blackberry may have some passionate users now, the gap in quality of their software compared to android/ios is going to keep widening. Basically they either need to get their software up to speed or move to android.
- div 16y ago
  BlackBerry loyalty seems to have changed if Nielsen's data is anything to go by. According to recent figures, only 42% of BlackBerry owners want a new BlackBerry as their next mobile device. In comparison, 72% of Android users want to stick with Android, and iPhone users seem to be most loyal with 89% wanting a new iPhone. Source: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/android-soars-but-iphone-still-most-desired-as-smartphones-grab-25-of-u-s-mobile-market/?utm_source=feedburner http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/android-so...
9oliYQjP 16y ago
I disagree. I think Microsoft and RIM should team up. Microsoft is supplying Windows 7 to vendors that just don't give a crap about what software is on their phone as long as it's got all the checkbox features (i.e. they offer both Android and Windows 7 devices but won't focus on one over the other). So stop supplying Windows 7 to these vendors and make RIM the exclusive vendor for Windows 7 devices. Microsoft has a pretty great mobile OS in Windows 7 (this coming from an iPhone lover) and RIM has great hardware and a fan base. These two companies need each other.
- barrkel 16y ago
  I wasn't aware Windows Phone 7 was released. I don't know about you, but I can't really tell what a product is like until I've at least read independent reviews, or preferably used it directly.
  - 9oliYQjP 16y ago
    That's usually true unless the product is from Microsoft. Unlike Apple, Microsoft is pretty up-front about what their product will be like before it's actually released. Also, it's not like Microsoft will be starting from scratch. They've got a good kernel and solid foundation to build from. They've got great developer tools. Yes, the user experience is a HUGE blank that needs to be filled in. But do I think Windows Phone 7 will suck like Windows Mobile? I'm a betting man and I say it won't suck, it will actually be decent and won't feel like Android's "I'm running KDE" crappy feel/user experience.
- paul9290 16y ago
  I totally agree. Another good pairing I have thought is HP(webOS to me needs better branding then either HP or Palm) and Nintendo. Exclusive access to Nintendo games and Nintendo allows devs to create/submit apps using some of their IP (Luigi but not Mario for example) Id buy a Nintendo like iPhone.
  - SoftwareMaven 16y ago
    My kids would choose a DSPhone over an iPhone any day, and they are valid consumers since 3 out of 4 of them have phones.
- WiseWeasel 16y ago
  Nice try, iPhone-lover! You just want to get RIM out of the picture for good, probably so your beloved platform can have the enterprise market all to itself or something... And what better way than with RIM switching their "fan base" over to WinMo. /~ Seriously, I don't know where to begin dissecting your assertion that "Microsoft has a pretty great mobile OS in Windows 7". To start, it would be prudent to point out that Windows Phone 7 is not even out yet, so who knows how great it will turn out to be. The screen captures so far seem a little bit low on usability to this smartphone user, but it's obviously a bit early to be making such a judgment. At this point, we don't really know whether MS has an ace or a turd up their sleeve.
hendzen 16y ago
I agree. BB OS is buggy and does not have even close to the level of developer attention as iOS or Android. RIM should just make the jump now before it fades into irrelevance. IMHO, the most useful features of BB OS could be reworked as an Android skin, like HTC's Sense or Motorola's Motoblur.
- grandalf 16y ago
  the apps are horrible, but the core BB operating system is very fast and usable.
  - RodgerTheGreat 16y ago
    In my (admittedly brief) experience with Blackberry development, this is anything but the case. Libraries are flaky, inconsistent and poorly documented, and aspects of the RIM JVM implementation are deeply flawed. For example, one of my coworkers recently discovered that static initialization blocks can be called multiple times if a class or interface has inheritors, blatantly violating the spec. ...Did you mean the UI or something?
azakus 16y ago
This would actually be a terrible idea. Imagine all the rewriting of every little business app people have written for their blackberries, and the instant obsolescence of BES servers. No, RIM just needs to innovate in a way that doesn't seem half-assed.
- wmf 16y ago
  Presumably if RIM switched to Android, they would port all their apps (like the much-beloved mail client) to Android and possibly even have a J2ME VM to run old third-party Blackberry apps.
rahoulb 16y ago
RIM owns QNX which has been working in embedded communication devices for years. Why would they need Android?
- wmf 16y ago
  To run Android apps.
  - DougBTX 16y ago
    Why would they want a task manager app?
- ergo98 16y ago
  >RIM owns QNX which has been working in embedded communication devices for years. RIM just bought QNX. Blackberry OS has nothing to do with QNX, though purportedly their Black Pad (once you go black...) will. Note that QNX is known to be solid as hell, but also quite slow -- it by design forces message and context switches for virtually every bit of intra-system communications, buying tremendous stability and security at the cost of performance. Put Neutrino on an ARM chip and you could probably divide the performance by three. Having said that, ultimately Dalvik is like J2ME, only without the crippling stupidity of Sun's mobile efforts destroying it. There is no reason -- if the cooperation can be achieved -- that a RIM phone, on Blackberry OS or QNX or anything else -- can't run Dalvik (aka Android) apps. If they provide the right API wrapper, and assure the OHA that they'll make a good implementation, there is nothing technically stopping it.
  - wmf 16y ago
    There is no reason that Blackberry OS or QNX or anything else can't run Android apps. Yeah, but then why not just use Android? Why spend a lot of R&D to build a QNX/Android chimera that's no better than vanilla Android? I realize that RIM needs to modernize their OS, but given a choice of buying QNX or just downloading Android, I don't understand why they chose QNX.
larsalan 16y ago
Maybe RIM could work on porting apps to android behind the scenes and then when everyone wants android on there bberries, bam. That os is free and open source, right? thought #2 open source to != profit. Ever heard of apple, microsoft, cisco, etc. Companies need to protect there intellectual property.
adolph 16y ago
Their change to a webkit based browser is interesting. Will RIM devices will be able to access a broad enough spectrum of mobile-oriented web-apps to overcome the perception of a too-late too-little application marketplace strategy? Will their implementation of webkit be too different from the others? It will be interesting to see what happens.
protomyth 16y ago
This bears and eerie resemblance to all those "Apple needs to switch to Windows NT" articles from a decade back.
- mlinsey 16y ago
  Well, Apple's core OS was severely lacking, and they did need to make a major switch to really start turning things around. Unfortunately, the analogous thing to what Apple did would have been to acquire Palm and use its underlying architecture for a new product that was still called RIM OS (and hope that the CEO of Palm was some genius visionary that could run your company instead of you, I guess?)
  - protomyth 16y ago
    Blackberry bought QNX which gives them a pretty sweet base. It doesn't seem like the CEO of Palm was too effective despite his pedigree. I don't know who you would have to buy to get a Steve Jobs.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    The difference is that NeXT acquired Apple (for a negative amount of money, that is) and provided them with an OS they could control. Apple adopting an OS Microsoft controlled was a Really Stupid Idea, much like Blackberry adopting an OS Google controls is now. The only meaningful difference is that Google is not a direct competitor while Microsoft was (in association with every PC maker)
nanairo 16y ago
OMG, this is such an unbelievable wrong idea. The only one that it would help is Android, and it would hurt Apple. But RIM would risk losing a lot too in the long-run. Look at what happened with the PC market. Compaq? Gateway? Even Dell and HP, the biggest two are earning very little from their computer division (well, relatively little). The two winners in the PC market have been Windows and Intel. So now we have RIM. They move to Android, and lose the exclusivity of their OS. Is their hardware division so strong and their product so flawless that they will be able to compete with Samsung, Motorola or HTC? The way I see it Samsung has still a few aces from its very strong screen division, and others (don't they also produce flash?). HTC also could win: they started from almost 0, a cut-throad market can only do them good. But the others? They all have access to the same processors, screens, batteries, and OS. Even now (and we have just started) a new phone enjoys a few months in the sunlight before being subclassed by a new model. In the long term they will only be able to compete by adding more recent hardware (but everyone can do that) and price. Is this really were RIM wants to be in the future?
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- ergo98 16y ago
  >Look at what happened with the PC market. Compaq? Gateway? Even Dell and HP, the biggest two are earning very little from their computer division (well, relatively little). The two winners in the PC market have been Windows and Intel. Your analogy suffers from a strong survivorship bias. If you were paying attention to the computer market in the 80s, there were countless companies with their own take on computers. The overwhelming number of them disappeared, while a very few (like Dell) managed to hang their fortunes on the winning side (PC-ish, Windows) and saw the dollars pour in. The more I think about your analogy, the more I realize that the example you gave is an exact counterpoint to your given conclusion. And really, you claim that Dell and HP make relatively little from their computer divisions? They are both global companies, having profited to the tune of many billions, on the backs of that effort. RIM cannot continue on their current arc. They will be dead in a matter of years. It is absolutely, positively guaranteed. In any case, one thing about Android is that in no way do vendors lose exclusivity...that's a part of the platform. I know tech people hate HTC Sense, but you know a lot of end-users actually love it. The same for Moto Blur and the other differentiations. We are not a good study in the utility of such differentiators. RIM would have the full ability to completely customize Android to be a very unique, very powerful experience.
joshu 16y ago
I am very seriously considering switching from a Droid back to a blackberry.
- nanairo 16y ago
  Would you care to explain more? (Incidentally here in the UK Blackberries are doing very well, and not just in the corporate environment. A lot of students and teenager have them too.)
  - tlack 16y ago
    That's the same in the states, but adoption has really fallen off after the Bold and Curve2 - there hasn't been anything exciting and new in the works in the past year or so, and the Torch is considered a failure so far stateside (it's only been a few weeks). Most of my friends still have Blackberries but as their handsets die they're being replaced with a lot of Androids and iPhones..
    - nanairo 16y ago
      But how much of that is hype and how much is a fundamental problem with Blackberries? To me the torch seems a pretty nice product. Sure: still a generation behind. But it's not like opponents are too far ahead: they (and MS and Meego) can still catch up. Look what Android did in one year! I think if the Blackberry keep being solid mobiles that are a little bit behind the curve but not much (say 6 to 12 months), they'll be just perfect for corporations. There's a bright future ahead.
  - joshu 16y ago
    You can use it as a PHONE. On the Droid, calling people seems secondary.
nanairo 16y ago
Incidentally, I think it's too early to call the shots. One year ago Android was another nobody, and now look where they are! Palm had a money problem, but if they didn't maybe they could have got good returns. And on the horizon we have Meego and Windows Phone 7. A year from now the situation may be very very different. Plus when your product is mostly good but some aspects are crap, wouldn't the best policy be to improve the latter instead of throwing everything and become a me-too manufacturer?
mattmaroon 16y ago
He's forgetting that a lot of times, it isn't the end user purchasing the Blackberry. RIM owns corporate sales, and that isn't slackening. Their overall market share in smart phones is declining, but that's just an effect of so many consumers beginning to buy them. At the end of the day it's all about profit, not market share, and a smaller percentage of a much larger pie is often a good thing. The iPhone (and most Android units, which are keyboardless) don't even attempt to cater to RIM's core market: hardcore emailers. RIM will continue to own that for the foreseeable future. They're even getting some consumer traction since text messaging is so ubiquitous. Corporate IT departments, that already have BES running, are going to keep buying Blackberries. And the Blackberries are going to keep them running BES. There are certainly alternatives (Android/Active Sync) but the cost involved in switching is significant and the benefits are merely nonexistent. So all RIM would do in switching to Android is end their vendor lock-in. Vendors don't often give that up. While the Blackberry OS is rough around the edges, so is Android. And the Berry still does email better than anyone.
- nanairo 16y ago
  Exactly. The Blackberries need to modernise their system, sure. But as long as they keep being the best in what they are, they've got a pretty nice niche, and it's all for themselves.
- ergo98 16y ago
  There seems to be a lot of debate based on emotion with remarkably little fact. Many corporations are moving to a bring-your-own smartphone policy. My organization did exactly that recently, and no new Blackberry has been purchased in some time: We have the BES server and the plans, but users don't want to carry some deadweight blackberry and the Android or iPhone smartphone that they also carry. With Exchange Web Services, the whole BES thing seems like such an anachronism anyways.
  - mattmaroon 16y ago
    Decrying an argument for lacking facts and then replying with an anecdote is hypocritical.
dstein 16y ago
The coming dominance of mobile/tablet oriented web apps running in the cloud with persistent offline operation is what is going to keep RIM (and others) from needing a better OS. Android and iPhone only have a temporary advantage in the mobile space.
WiseWeasel 16y ago
Here's my possibly slightly less ridiculous proclamation as to what RIM should do: RIM should set up shop in a warmer climate, maybe the California Bay Area, so that they can attract more software design talent hesitant to live in cold, windy Toronto.
- luminary 16y ago
  RIM has an R&D location in Redwood City since 2008.
- chollida1 16y ago
  I thought RIM was in Waterloo, not Toronto.
Shakattack 16y ago
Doesn't this kill any hope for BlackBerry to have software revenue? Can't see that being a good thing given how fast the app market is growing. They should have bought Palm back then could.
yason 16y ago
They way I've seen it for about at least a year now is that the mobile computing world is becoming a commodity, just like the desktop computing world, and in a commodity world there are only major platforms and not big manufacturers. Consider Windows and the PC hardware brands: generally there's not much difference between Dell, Samsung, HP, Lenovo and the rest. For example, most people are buying laptops these days. Sure, all the brands have little niches: some are considered durable and professional, some focus on the cheap segment and some focus on the pricey end, some make big gamers' laptops and some make small travel laptops. But they're all brands and brands are all about what people think and not much about reality. This means that my mother can choose any laptop she want and even the cheapest one has many, many times more power and features than she needs. For the mobile world, the transition to a commodity took place when phones became computers. Cellphones are a relatively new invention and new market, and in the beginning it was enough to just reliably manufacture a working phone. Not every company could do even that! The best hardware quite a lot better than the worst hardware. Then gradually the phone hardware become a commodity. The dysfunctional designs got weeded out. Manufacturing got centralized to companies specializing in specific chips or chipsets. These days a company without lots of experience and history in the mobile world can buy a set of required system-on-chips for gsm/3G/bluetooth/camera functionality and anything beyond, and start making mobile phones. While things did work when each cellphone maker had their own OS it was quite a limitation, and very analogous to the 80's home computer market. In the 80's, you could buy different Commodore, Atari, Apple, PC, Acorn, Sinclair, and probably a few dozen other niche home computers and none of them worked together. Finally, in the late 80's the PC platform with all their dozens of IBM PC clones won over everyone else, even most of Apple. Soon everyone found themselves having landed on the same commodity hardware and they figured that they'll make more money if they just use the same OS than everyone else, rather than a custom OS that would just cut them off the big market. Hence, Windows bloomed, everyone sold it, and soon it didn't matter which computer you bought because you ended up using Windows on it. Differences between PC makers become differences in brands. The same is happening in mobile phones, err, I mean mobile computers. Because everyone (relatively speaking) can do the hardware, companies can now afford to, and must, focus on the software. I hereby foresee that in a few years we're down to Android and iPhone and "the rest". Unless Apple begins to target the low end, Android will become the clearly largest mobile phone platform in the world. iPhone will compete in the high end against Android but the relation between Android and iPhone OS are likely to parallel the way Microsoft and Apple relate to each other in the desktop market. That is, unless unforeseen disruptions arise and completely throw the market upside down, Android will grow to have 40-50% market share, Apple up to 20-30%, and the rest will be 5-15% Symbian, Windows Phone, and many others combined.
s3graham 16y ago
Hah! Was this really written after Oracle sued Google? So RIM should give up patent protection to switch to Dalvik?
tzs 16y ago
RIM is buying QNX. Probably smarter to build a new kick-ass platform based on QNX than switch to a platform that just got hit with a major lawsuit.

32 points by keltex 16y ago

Obviously the entire article is fluff, but there's one thing that sticks out as just wrong: "No one who buys BlackBerry products actually cares about the BlackBerry OS." Has this guy ever talked to a Blackberry owner? They seem to be some of the most loyal cell phone owners around. Everyone talks about switching to an iPhone or whatever, but (from the article): "RIM is still selling plenty of BlackBerry devices -- thanks to international expansion and big sales at carriers."

dmix 16y ago
I believe this article had the basis that the reality of the market is changing. So while Blackberry may have some passionate users now, the gap in quality of their software compared to android/ios is going to keep widening. Basically they either need to get their software up to speed or move to android.
div 16y ago
BlackBerry loyalty seems to have changed if Nielsen's data is anything to go by. According to recent figures, only 42% of BlackBerry owners want a new BlackBerry as their next mobile device. In comparison, 72% of Android users want to stick with Android, and iPhone users seem to be most loyal with 89% wanting a new iPhone. Source: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/android-soars-but-iphone-still-most-desired-as-smartphones-grab-25-of-u-s-mobile-market/?utm_source=feedburner http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/android-so...

9oliYQjP 16y ago

I disagree. I think Microsoft and RIM should team up. Microsoft is supplying Windows 7 to vendors that just don't give a crap about what software is on their phone as long as it's got all the checkbox features (i.e. they offer both Android and Windows 7 devices but won't focus on one over the other). So stop supplying Windows 7 to these vendors and make RIM the exclusive vendor for Windows 7 devices. Microsoft has a pretty great mobile OS in Windows 7 (this coming from an iPhone lover) and RIM has great hardware and a fan base. These two companies need each other.

barrkel 16y ago
I wasn't aware Windows Phone 7 was released. I don't know about you, but I can't really tell what a product is like until I've at least read independent reviews, or preferably used it directly.
- 9oliYQjP 16y ago
  That's usually true unless the product is from Microsoft. Unlike Apple, Microsoft is pretty up-front about what their product will be like before it's actually released. Also, it's not like Microsoft will be starting from scratch. They've got a good kernel and solid foundation to build from. They've got great developer tools. Yes, the user experience is a HUGE blank that needs to be filled in. But do I think Windows Phone 7 will suck like Windows Mobile? I'm a betting man and I say it won't suck, it will actually be decent and won't feel like Android's "I'm running KDE" crappy feel/user experience.
paul9290 16y ago
I totally agree. Another good pairing I have thought is HP(webOS to me needs better branding then either HP or Palm) and Nintendo. Exclusive access to Nintendo games and Nintendo allows devs to create/submit apps using some of their IP (Luigi but not Mario for example) Id buy a Nintendo like iPhone.
- SoftwareMaven 16y ago
  My kids would choose a DSPhone over an iPhone any day, and they are valid consumers since 3 out of 4 of them have phones.
WiseWeasel 16y ago
Nice try, iPhone-lover! You just want to get RIM out of the picture for good, probably so your beloved platform can have the enterprise market all to itself or something... And what better way than with RIM switching their "fan base" over to WinMo. /~ Seriously, I don't know where to begin dissecting your assertion that "Microsoft has a pretty great mobile OS in Windows 7". To start, it would be prudent to point out that Windows Phone 7 is not even out yet, so who knows how great it will turn out to be. The screen captures so far seem a little bit low on usability to this smartphone user, but it's obviously a bit early to be making such a judgment. At this point, we don't really know whether MS has an ace or a turd up their sleeve.

hendzen 16y ago

I agree. BB OS is buggy and does not have even close to the level of developer attention as iOS or Android. RIM should just make the jump now before it fades into irrelevance. IMHO, the most useful features of BB OS could be reworked as an Android skin, like HTC's Sense or Motorola's Motoblur.

grandalf 16y ago
the apps are horrible, but the core BB operating system is very fast and usable.
- RodgerTheGreat 16y ago
  In my (admittedly brief) experience with Blackberry development, this is anything but the case. Libraries are flaky, inconsistent and poorly documented, and aspects of the RIM JVM implementation are deeply flawed. For example, one of my coworkers recently discovered that static initialization blocks can be called multiple times if a class or interface has inheritors, blatantly violating the spec. ...Did you mean the UI or something?

azakus 16y ago

This would actually be a terrible idea. Imagine all the rewriting of every little business app people have written for their blackberries, and the instant obsolescence of BES servers. No, RIM just needs to innovate in a way that doesn't seem half-assed.

wmf 16y ago
Presumably if RIM switched to Android, they would port all their apps (like the much-beloved mail client) to Android and possibly even have a J2ME VM to run old third-party Blackberry apps.

rahoulb 16y ago

RIM owns QNX which has been working in embedded communication devices for years. Why would they need Android?

wmf 16y ago
To run Android apps.
- DougBTX 16y ago
  Why would they want a task manager app?
ergo98 16y ago
>RIM owns QNX which has been working in embedded communication devices for years. RIM just bought QNX. Blackberry OS has nothing to do with QNX, though purportedly their Black Pad (once you go black...) will. Note that QNX is known to be solid as hell, but also quite slow -- it by design forces message and context switches for virtually every bit of intra-system communications, buying tremendous stability and security at the cost of performance. Put Neutrino on an ARM chip and you could probably divide the performance by three. Having said that, ultimately Dalvik is like J2ME, only without the crippling stupidity of Sun's mobile efforts destroying it. There is no reason -- if the cooperation can be achieved -- that a RIM phone, on Blackberry OS or QNX or anything else -- can't run Dalvik (aka Android) apps. If they provide the right API wrapper, and assure the OHA that they'll make a good implementation, there is nothing technically stopping it.
- wmf 16y ago
  There is no reason that Blackberry OS or QNX or anything else can't run Android apps. Yeah, but then why not just use Android? Why spend a lot of R&D to build a QNX/Android chimera that's no better than vanilla Android? I realize that RIM needs to modernize their OS, but given a choice of buying QNX or just downloading Android, I don't understand why they chose QNX.

larsalan 16y ago

Maybe RIM could work on porting apps to android behind the scenes and then when everyone wants android on there bberries, bam. That os is free and open source, right? thought #2 open source to != profit. Ever heard of apple, microsoft, cisco, etc. Companies need to protect there intellectual property.

adolph 16y ago

Their change to a webkit based browser is interesting. Will RIM devices will be able to access a broad enough spectrum of mobile-oriented web-apps to overcome the perception of a too-late too-little application marketplace strategy? Will their implementation of webkit be too different from the others? It will be interesting to see what happens.

protomyth 16y ago

This bears and eerie resemblance to all those "Apple needs to switch to Windows NT" articles from a decade back.

mlinsey 16y ago
Well, Apple's core OS was severely lacking, and they did need to make a major switch to really start turning things around. Unfortunately, the analogous thing to what Apple did would have been to acquire Palm and use its underlying architecture for a new product that was still called RIM OS (and hope that the CEO of Palm was some genius visionary that could run your company instead of you, I guess?)
- protomyth 16y ago
  Blackberry bought QNX which gives them a pretty sweet base. It doesn't seem like the CEO of Palm was too effective despite his pedigree. I don't know who you would have to buy to get a Steve Jobs.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  The difference is that NeXT acquired Apple (for a negative amount of money, that is) and provided them with an OS they could control. Apple adopting an OS Microsoft controlled was a Really Stupid Idea, much like Blackberry adopting an OS Google controls is now. The only meaningful difference is that Google is not a direct competitor while Microsoft was (in association with every PC maker)

nanairo 16y ago

OMG, this is such an unbelievable wrong idea. The only one that it would help is Android, and it would hurt Apple. But RIM would risk losing a lot too in the long-run. Look at what happened with the PC market. Compaq? Gateway? Even Dell and HP, the biggest two are earning very little from their computer division (well, relatively little). The two winners in the PC market have been Windows and Intel. So now we have RIM. They move to Android, and lose the exclusivity of their OS. Is their hardware division so strong and their product so flawless that they will be able to compete with Samsung, Motorola or HTC? The way I see it Samsung has still a few aces from its very strong screen division, and others (don't they also produce flash?). HTC also could win: they started from almost 0, a cut-throad market can only do them good. But the others? They all have access to the same processors, screens, batteries, and OS. Even now (and we have just started) a new phone enjoys a few months in the sunlight before being subclassed by a new model. In the long term they will only be able to compete by adding more recent hardware (but everyone can do that) and price. Is this really were RIM wants to be in the future?

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
ergo98 16y ago
>Look at what happened with the PC market. Compaq? Gateway? Even Dell and HP, the biggest two are earning very little from their computer division (well, relatively little). The two winners in the PC market have been Windows and Intel. Your analogy suffers from a strong survivorship bias. If you were paying attention to the computer market in the 80s, there were countless companies with their own take on computers. The overwhelming number of them disappeared, while a very few (like Dell) managed to hang their fortunes on the winning side (PC-ish, Windows) and saw the dollars pour in. The more I think about your analogy, the more I realize that the example you gave is an exact counterpoint to your given conclusion. And really, you claim that Dell and HP make relatively little from their computer divisions? They are both global companies, having profited to the tune of many billions, on the backs of that effort. RIM cannot continue on their current arc. They will be dead in a matter of years. It is absolutely, positively guaranteed. In any case, one thing about Android is that in no way do vendors lose exclusivity...that's a part of the platform. I know tech people hate HTC Sense, but you know a lot of end-users actually love it. The same for Moto Blur and the other differentiations. We are not a good study in the utility of such differentiators. RIM would have the full ability to completely customize Android to be a very unique, very powerful experience.

joshu 16y ago

I am very seriously considering switching from a Droid back to a blackberry.

nanairo 16y ago
Would you care to explain more? (Incidentally here in the UK Blackberries are doing very well, and not just in the corporate environment. A lot of students and teenager have them too.)
- tlack 16y ago
  That's the same in the states, but adoption has really fallen off after the Bold and Curve2 - there hasn't been anything exciting and new in the works in the past year or so, and the Torch is considered a failure so far stateside (it's only been a few weeks). Most of my friends still have Blackberries but as their handsets die they're being replaced with a lot of Androids and iPhones..
  - nanairo 16y ago
    But how much of that is hype and how much is a fundamental problem with Blackberries? To me the torch seems a pretty nice product. Sure: still a generation behind. But it's not like opponents are too far ahead: they (and MS and Meego) can still catch up. Look what Android did in one year! I think if the Blackberry keep being solid mobiles that are a little bit behind the curve but not much (say 6 to 12 months), they'll be just perfect for corporations. There's a bright future ahead.
- joshu 16y ago
  You can use it as a PHONE. On the Droid, calling people seems secondary.

nanairo 16y ago

Incidentally, I think it's too early to call the shots. One year ago Android was another nobody, and now look where they are! Palm had a money problem, but if they didn't maybe they could have got good returns. And on the horizon we have Meego and Windows Phone 7. A year from now the situation may be very very different. Plus when your product is mostly good but some aspects are crap, wouldn't the best policy be to improve the latter instead of throwing everything and become a me-too manufacturer?

mattmaroon 16y ago

He's forgetting that a lot of times, it isn't the end user purchasing the Blackberry. RIM owns corporate sales, and that isn't slackening. Their overall market share in smart phones is declining, but that's just an effect of so many consumers beginning to buy them. At the end of the day it's all about profit, not market share, and a smaller percentage of a much larger pie is often a good thing. The iPhone (and most Android units, which are keyboardless) don't even attempt to cater to RIM's core market: hardcore emailers. RIM will continue to own that for the foreseeable future. They're even getting some consumer traction since text messaging is so ubiquitous. Corporate IT departments, that already have BES running, are going to keep buying Blackberries. And the Blackberries are going to keep them running BES. There are certainly alternatives (Android/Active Sync) but the cost involved in switching is significant and the benefits are merely nonexistent. So all RIM would do in switching to Android is end their vendor lock-in. Vendors don't often give that up. While the Blackberry OS is rough around the edges, so is Android. And the Berry still does email better than anyone.

nanairo 16y ago
Exactly. The Blackberries need to modernise their system, sure. But as long as they keep being the best in what they are, they've got a pretty nice niche, and it's all for themselves.
ergo98 16y ago
There seems to be a lot of debate based on emotion with remarkably little fact. Many corporations are moving to a bring-your-own smartphone policy. My organization did exactly that recently, and no new Blackberry has been purchased in some time: We have the BES server and the plans, but users don't want to carry some deadweight blackberry and the Android or iPhone smartphone that they also carry. With Exchange Web Services, the whole BES thing seems like such an anachronism anyways.
- mattmaroon 16y ago
  Decrying an argument for lacking facts and then replying with an anecdote is hypocritical.

dstein 16y ago

The coming dominance of mobile/tablet oriented web apps running in the cloud with persistent offline operation is what is going to keep RIM (and others) from needing a better OS. Android and iPhone only have a temporary advantage in the mobile space.

WiseWeasel 16y ago

Here's my possibly slightly less ridiculous proclamation as to what RIM should do: RIM should set up shop in a warmer climate, maybe the California Bay Area, so that they can attract more software design talent hesitant to live in cold, windy Toronto.

luminary 16y ago
RIM has an R&D location in Redwood City since 2008.
chollida1 16y ago
I thought RIM was in Waterloo, not Toronto.

Shakattack 16y ago

Doesn't this kill any hope for BlackBerry to have software revenue? Can't see that being a good thing given how fast the app market is growing. They should have bought Palm back then could.

yason 16y ago

They way I've seen it for about at least a year now is that the mobile computing world is becoming a commodity, just like the desktop computing world, and in a commodity world there are only major platforms and not big manufacturers. Consider Windows and the PC hardware brands: generally there's not much difference between Dell, Samsung, HP, Lenovo and the rest. For example, most people are buying laptops these days. Sure, all the brands have little niches: some are considered durable and professional, some focus on the cheap segment and some focus on the pricey end, some make big gamers' laptops and some make small travel laptops. But they're all brands and brands are all about what people think and not much about reality. This means that my mother can choose any laptop she want and even the cheapest one has many, many times more power and features than she needs. For the mobile world, the transition to a commodity took place when phones became computers. Cellphones are a relatively new invention and new market, and in the beginning it was enough to just reliably manufacture a working phone. Not every company could do even that! The best hardware quite a lot better than the worst hardware. Then gradually the phone hardware become a commodity. The dysfunctional designs got weeded out. Manufacturing got centralized to companies specializing in specific chips or chipsets. These days a company without lots of experience and history in the mobile world can buy a set of required system-on-chips for gsm/3G/bluetooth/camera functionality and anything beyond, and start making mobile phones. While things did work when each cellphone maker had their own OS it was quite a limitation, and very analogous to the 80's home computer market. In the 80's, you could buy different Commodore, Atari, Apple, PC, Acorn, Sinclair, and probably a few dozen other niche home computers and none of them worked together. Finally, in the late 80's the PC platform with all their dozens of IBM PC clones won over everyone else, even most of Apple. Soon everyone found themselves having landed on the same commodity hardware and they figured that they'll make more money if they just use the same OS than everyone else, rather than a custom OS that would just cut them off the big market. Hence, Windows bloomed, everyone sold it, and soon it didn't matter which computer you bought because you ended up using Windows on it. Differences between PC makers become differences in brands. The same is happening in mobile phones, err, I mean mobile computers. Because everyone (relatively speaking) can do the hardware, companies can now afford to, and must, focus on the software. I hereby foresee that in a few years we're down to Android and iPhone and "the rest". Unless Apple begins to target the low end, Android will become the clearly largest mobile phone platform in the world. iPhone will compete in the high end against Android but the relation between Android and iPhone OS are likely to parallel the way Microsoft and Apple relate to each other in the desktop market. That is, unless unforeseen disruptions arise and completely throw the market upside down, Android will grow to have 40-50% market share, Apple up to 20-30%, and the rest will be 5-15% Symbian, Windows Phone, and many others combined.

s3graham 16y ago

Hah! Was this really written after Oracle sued Google? So RIM should give up patent protection to switch to Dalvik?

tzs 16y ago

RIM is buying QNX. Probably smarter to build a new kick-ass platform based on QNX than switch to a platform that just got hit with a major lawsuit.