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?
Technically moving to Android doesn't mean RIM has to give up much exclusivity. (Almost) No one likes the RIM OS, they like the RIM messaging and e-mail apps (with the related back end services). There is nothing stopping RIM porting those to Android and still keeping them exclusive. This way if you want to use the blackberry apps you still have to buy a blackberry and RIM gets to use a much better OS with a much bigger app ecosystem and free up some OS developers. Looks like a bunch of upsides to me.
I'm personally not very confident in RIM's hardware or product design skills. So on the hardware front, RIM wouldn't be a competitor.
So, if we ignore RIM's role as a hardware manufacturer. If they were to adopt Android, they'd essentially be reduced to a service provider: BIS/BES. There's no way I'd settle for that if I was RIM.
Would it even be feasible to integrate BIS/BES security features and what into android?
>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.
Sure. But your view is a bit pessimistic. I would like to think that the management at RIM think they've got something unique that will give them an edge. Maybe it's more risky but if you believe in your company that's a risk you should take.
And RIM is not exactly a nobody: they've got a large chunk of the market. Your point is basically: "Forget your past glory, give up your profit margins, and join the Android crowd". Why not instead: "Improve your OS to be on par with the competition (no need to be better), and use your good hardware and your proprietary applications to make the difference".
I don't see how using Android is a long term viable strategy for a company that currently has 17% of the market. It looks more like throwing the towel.
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.
I'm seeing something different in terms of corporate sales. You're right, the BES is a "global"/centralized project and cost, usually negotiated with an org-wide discount for devices.
But every Blackberry device for each individual employee is usually an as-it-comes decision, spread out over departments. And at that level, the Blackberry is very much in danger.
Why?
* Within months of Apple announcing iphone Exchange compatibility years ago, it was enabled at every corporation that I know of. (It only takes one VIP with an iphone to make IT jump to make it happen. It's not just an iphone thing, it happens all the time with all sorts of edge/marginal technologies.)
* As for non-VIPs: even Blackberry companies have a cell phone purchase program for non Blackberry devices. This usually involves a preferred carrier and device set (that has a company-wide discount). But it also includes an "exception" program where companies will reimburse part of the cost of whatever device an employee chooses. These programs were not invented for smartphones, but just simple phones. But they sure are being used for smartphones at this point.
* Newest: What I'm seeing on the ground is this: Due to tighter budget scrutiny, fewer and fewer corp-bought devices (of any brand) in general, and employees not even bothering with any employer stuff at the purchase level. And then seeking partial reimbursement for their bill. It's less and less common for the employee-chosen device to be a Blackberry.
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.
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.
He is right many companies are switching to a bring-your-own-smartphone policies. We haven't issued a Blackberry in quite some time and stuff like IMAP and OWA make it easy to make just about any cleverphone functional.
The issue is dominance. Once a new player enters the segment, it's a question of time until it fragments. Blackberry enjoyed a dominant position for a long time but being the #1 corporate-issue phone is not important in a world where more and more people bring their own phones into their jobs.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?)
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Probably because Microsoft is following Apple's lead in many ways with a clean elegant UI and a managed App Store. Android on the other hand seems to be adding complexity, UI has never been good, and the Market is descending into an even deeper level of chaos (apps stealing private data, fake banking apps, etc) So if you like the iPhone there's a good chance WM7 would appeal to you. If you like Android there's a good chance neither iPhone or WM7 would appeal to you. I don't plan to buy a WM7 device myself but I think it will be successful because so many people just don't want to deal with all this added complexity of an Android device. Going back to the original article I think simplicity is a big reason RIM is still doing fine. Lots of people just want a phone that can also do e-mail. I believe long term Android's complexity (UI, different models, different limitations per model, etc) is going to be a big problem for Google.
Windows Mobile 7 is not available: You haven't used it or even read a reasonably accurate review of it, and your assumptions about its usability are completely baseless. The app store is not available. Further, Windows Mobile in no way will be limited to their "app store", completely undermining your comparison with Apple.
Your Android points are so far from reality that I don't even want to engage in that. Android complexity? Security?
The truth of the matter is that iPhone owners who wave the flag see Windows Mobile 7 as the crippled kid that they try to promote as the alternative to Android, singing its praises as a weak distraction. Every teenager saw this transparent technique play out, and I would hope that we can all recognize it for what it is now.
I've seen a video walk through of every single feature of WM7 along with apps/games. I think that's a pretty good basis for an initial opinion. I've also used the Zune HD which has a very similar UI. (nearly pixel-by-pixel identical for the media player app)
For the record I own an iPhone and an Android phone. I've owned a BlackBerry, WM6 phone, Palm Pre, etc. If I had a third front pocket I might consider buying a WM7 device.
I can't speak for the original poster... but to me WP7 seems actually quite nice despite me liking the iPhone too.
I like that MS tried for once to think outside the box: maybe it will be good, maybe it will be crap. Ironically everything I hated about MS (trying too cover all the basis, doing me-too products) seems to be the way Google is going.
But that doesn't mean I want Android to do badly. I just think the mobile market is still young and there's a lot of innovation. I like a good competition, and I appreciate when a company, ANY company, tries to do a serious product. I could not care less that it's MS, Nokia, or Palm.
My guess is they miss the old rivalry, back when things were simple, good vs. bad, white & black. The tech industry today is too morally ambiguous, with Apple sometimes playing the part of evil villain against Google, Adobe and others, something they're not comfortable with.
That actually makes a lot of sense. At the end of the day, RIM and MS have always shared the same target demographic for the most part - they are the de facto handset / OS of the enterprise. The iPhone has slowly been working its way into the enterprise sector, but they could easily lock down that entire segment by focusing on security + encryption and heavily integrating with Visual Studio / .NET. It would also allow Microsoft to benefit from having pseudo-vertical integration, as their best products seem to be the ones where they are developing for a single hardware platform (eg, Xbox, later Zune models, etc).
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)
>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.
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.
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.
(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.)
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..
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
with Apple and Android aiming mostly at the consumer market, and, Windows and RIM at the business market. Meego will be a generic blog that will work in every field but will never excel. And Symbian will control the cheap, 3rd-world country phones.
I do have hopes though that maybe Meego will end up being a surprise. (I wish, I really liked Nokia back in the days).
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.
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?