It is a sad day for many employees of RIM. During the company’s disastrous first quarter results, they learned some workers would be laid off. But it’s not the workers that are responsible for this mess.
[ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]I first came out against RIM back in February when the company was the darling of the media and the PlayBook was the device expected to kill the iPad. At that time, I wrote a story called “RIM needs to shut up and ship,” chastising the company for announcing three generations of PlayBooks before they even shipped one.
This was a sure sign to me that RIM had fallen far behind Apple and was doing what it could to cope.
RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie said, “I think the PlayBook redefines what a tablet should do.”
Ultimately, RIM released a device that doesn’t even have email or calendaring. This from the company that made its mark in the mobile arena based on secure email. What’s worse is the response that RIM’s CEO had to the lack of basic features.
Jim Balsillie said that people are “overplaying one aspect that really isn’t a core element that we’ve seen from our enterprise customers or webmail people.”
Email is a core element for everyone these days, let alone the professionals that RIM is targeting with the PlayBook. With the denials from Balsillie and the interview meltdowns of co-CEO Mike Lazaridis, it became clear what RIM’s tablet strategy was — they didn’t have one.
In that article, I wrote:
RIM’s strategy so far is to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. To be even more specific, throw everything at the wall that the iPad isn’t and see what they can fool people into believing.
In short, RIM doesn’t have a cohesive strategy to build or market the PlayBook or its ecosystem.
RIM is doing everything it can to convince people that the PlayBook is not an iPad, and they are doing a great job. Unfortunately for RIM, people want an iPad, so all they’ve done is give consumers more reasons to not buy the PlayBook.
Not even Apple could have planned RIM’s PlayBook strategy this good.
At the time, Lazaridis said “The BlackBerry PlayBook is an amazing tablet. The power that we have embedded creates one of the most compelling app experiences available in a mobile computing device today.”
Yet, they only shipped 500,000 since April 19.
Not only that, RIM’s co-CEO’s inability to launch the PlayBook properly is effectively killing the BlackBerry business. In April, RIM said it would not make its guidance for the first quarter citing lower than expected BlackBerry sales. I believe this is a direct result of the management fumbling the PlayBook.
RIM said it expected BlackBerry shipments to be on the lower end of the 13.5 million to 14.5 million forecasted in March. The actually number is 13.2 million.
Thursday’s financial results have showed us one thing. The problem with RIM is at the top. While RIM’s co-CEOs will cut employees, the company’s product strategy will continue to suffer at the hands of Lazaridis and Balsillie.
The time for excuses is over. It’s now time for the RIM shareholders to demand a change.
My father-in-law tells great stories about his days consulting for big dumb companies (most of which have since either disappeared or been acquired) which needed to cut costs and make their operations more cost-effective.
One anecdote I particularly enjoy involves him reporting to upper management, after a thorough investigation of their entire structure, that they could save many millions by firing several redundant Vice Presidents who did nothing but duplicate each other’s work all day.
His assessment was not appreciated by the oligarchs who had expected him to find low-level employees who could be fired to improve their Wall Street numbers.
I feel sorry for the many RIM employees whose jobs are being eliminated so that the co-CEO’s can keep their jobs. The trash talking CEOs deserve to be fired immediately. They railed on Apple and it’s products for months apparently not having a clue about the worthlessness of their own PlayBook.
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I will be thrilled when both these dumb SOBs are removed from RIM
A company in RIM’s situation needs to hire *more* employees not less and start doing new things. Killing off their workforce just signals that they are going to continue to do only what they’re doing, and as it declines, they need less people to do it.
Stick a fork in them. All the people that said Android would kill the iPhone were wrong. Those perceptive few that said it would kill Blackberry were right.
A company in RIM’s situation needs to hire *more* employees not less and start doing new things. Killing off their workforce just signals that they are going to continue to do only what they’re doing, and as it declines, they need less people to do it.
Stick a fork in them. All the people that said Android would kill the iPhone were wrong. Those perceptive few that said it would kill Blackberry were right.
That last paragraph really hits home.
In today’s business in our hemisphere people are one of the greatest cost factors and thus a primary target for cost reduction measures.
I understand that streamlining is necessary in every larger company, but most times we hear about something like this, it’s from companies that regard everybody below c-level as a cost factor, almost completely ignoring their value for the company.
Moeskido mentioned in the other thread, that RIM also needs to replace their other c-level employees and he’s completely right.
RIM effectively lost their USP on the consumer side when IMAP became the de facto standard for free email accounts (GMail), when alternatives started to crop-up for their business customers, extensive changes inside the company would’ve been necessary.
Since then the market is chopping away at every distinguishing characteristic RIM’s products have; iMessage being only the latest victim.
RIM isn’t Microsoft, their products are not ubiquitous with no viable alternatives. They operate in one of the fastest growing markets that exist today, yet they still do business like the iPhone and Android never happened.
If RIM doesn’t make internal changes fast, I believe the company will be reduced to a service provider in the near future, which isn’t a pretty outlook either, because they have strong competition in this arena, too.
A CEO cannot save RIM. They are simply sitting on top of an outdated business model.
An outdated business model? They make smartphones and tablets? I wasn’t aware either of those products were outdated? If anything, thats a growing business model. RIM has to market them better though.
RIM just doesn’t market them as well as Apple or Google. As for Apple and its new messaging app everyone is making a big deal about, the Blackberry Messenger hasn’t mattered for a quite awhile as a reason to buy a BB. Why? Apps like Kik or Pingchat already message cross platform for free.
I think RIM has to market what their phones do better. Simple things such as typing on a QWERTY keyboard rather than touching a flat screen. It seems like people feel good about themselves using a touch screen only phone, as if they are up with the times, yet it will take them much longer to type messages, emails, etc. all while looking like they are doing surgery. Also it take two hands to type on a touch screen, one to hold the device, one to press the screen. Real keyboards you can thumb messages, even with one hand.
Also BB phones seem to have stronger battery life than Android based or Apple’s iPhones. Android phones won’t even last a work day, so you have to hope you can charge it at a USB port or wall outlet or you will have a brick pretty fast.
As for the two CEO thing, didn’t those guys start the company? I would normally think its a bad move, but not when the founders of the company are still at the helm. They are not Steve Jobs, but wasn’t there a time long ago where even Apple with Steve Jobs was struggling? Since he came back in the late 90’s its been smooth sailing though…
Microsoft isn’t immune to this problem, either. We tend to blame Ballmer for that company’s problems, but how many of his immediate subordinates are doing little more than enabling his bad ideas?
I didn’t mean to imply that Microsoft is immune to problems like this, but their main business is in a market that works slower than what RIM has to face right now.
Microsoft’s products are ubiquitous and the de facto standard in many places, which simply means that it will take longer before Microsoft has to deal with the consequences of their bad management.
You’re right of course; I don’t think there are too many people in the c-level of Microsoft who are willing to tell Ballmer that his ideas are shit.
But MS don’t need RIM
RIM is a software company, it live on SW, if it live on device manufacturing like MOTO, it has been died 10 death, that is why RIM quick down whenever their SW got problem, RIM got problem,
Device manufacturing need abilities like efficient process, low cost high performance design,….., when new hired employee introduce efficient concept to RIM, they lay them off, they don’t think those is important for a device producer in their mind, they dont want to change, they are software student from university,
google is a software company, they want hardware like moto, nokia, they dont want RIM, so will microsoft want RI