The timeless story of Ozymandias -- <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias</a> -- (if you don't know the 1818 sonnet by Shelley, read it before downvoting. It's relevant and timeless)<p>I met a traveller from an antique land<p>Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone<p>Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,<p>Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown<p>And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command<p>Tell that its sculptor well those passions read<p>Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,<p>The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.<p>And on the pedestal these words appear:<p>`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:<p>Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'<p>Nothing beside remains. Round the decay<p>Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,<p>The lone and level sands stretch far away".<p>EDIT: Thanks for the link to the excellent Breaking Bad video. For what it's worth, I haven't seen an episode since season 3 so didn't realize the coincidence. My pop culture connection would have been to Watchmen.
I've been thinking about RIM lately and I think they basically had chances to turn themselves around, but took neither.<p>The first was in '08/'09 - shortly after the iPhone. Some companies (Google, Samsung) saw where the industry was going, made the appropriate decisions and are now profiting handsomely. In hindsight, that was the right time for RIM to acquire QNX and start on BB10, which might have done very well had it come out in 2011. With decent hardware, a solid OS, their own style and riding on BBM (big at that time), they might have staked a sustainable 10-15% chunk of the market.<p>The second chance was '10/'11, around the time of Nokia's Burning Platform Memo. This is when RIM started on BB10, but as we see now, it was already too late. Had they bet heavily on Android and on their strengths (security, gov & enterprise sales), they might be doing pretty-well today.<p>I hope the Waterloo area survives this well.
started developping apps for mobile in 2009. at that time, i aimed for ios development and blackberry. it took me 2 months to get my first app on ios, and i thought "ok, now let's start learning about blackberry".<p>So, i downloaded their doc. iirc, they had three ways to develop apps. one was using web technology, and you couldn't do much. then they had two different sets of java apis : an old, discontinued one, with which you seemed to be able to have things work, and a new one, soon to be released, and undocumented.<p>so i installed their sdk, on my mac, and tried to run a "hello world". but their sdk required windows, because the simulator didn't exist on mac. i had just bought and dual-boot installed a windows 7. but the sdk was just for xp, so i had to run an XP vm inside my windows.
then i launched eclipse, to launch the simulator, to launch the Java program that was supposed to run my hello world.<p>i never was patient enough for that hello world to show.<p>then i said " well...let's get back to that once a customer ask for a blackberry development".<p>and guess what, that customer never came.
It's unfortunate, as someone who just purchased a Q10 (switched from Android), I think they've finally got their act together and released something excellent.<p>The Q10's battery life is great, the hardware keyboard is solid and travels well. The Paratek antenna gets the best reception and data connection of any device I've ever used. The BB10 software isn't great, but it's decent. (It's certainly far better than where WebOS / iOS / Android was when they launched. Even today, BB10.2 is significantly better / more powerful than Windows Phone 8, even if the UI is less well defined).<p>Their story, to me, seems almost down to timing. They're executing pretty well right now, it's just two to three years too late.<p>It will be sad to watch all that hardware die. In a year or two, there probably won't be <i>any</i> devices available that have a large battery, solid hardware keyboard, and decent cellular data reception.
I was really hoping they could turn it around -- by all accounts the new phones are pretty nice and the mobile OS market could use some more serious competitors. But they have virtually no apps and no clear path to getting apps. Combine that with BYOD policies that let employees bring their own phones instead of having one issued and their whole sales model goes out the window.
Speaking as an enterprise customer on long upgrade cycles, RIM/Blackberry badly judged the situation vis a vis their enterprise customer base.<p>The new Z10 was not compatible with their large install base of Blackberry Enterprise Server. Anyone still running BES at the time the Z10 was introduced was likely to be a shop interested in security and control of the mobile platform their end users were using.<p>Which is why businesses like my employer and many others kept buying BB OS7 devices (did you notice they didnt break numbers out and actually mentioned BBOS7 as a significant portion during their investor call ?)<p>TL;DR: They thought all their enterprise customers would upgrade fast, they guessed wrong.
We're closing in on the launch of cross-platform BBM, and much of the work for that wasn't even done internally. They contracted that stuff out. Now they're cutting actual BB people. A lot of it is dead weight, and the usual bloated middle management, but I can't wait to see who else gets the axe here.<p>Make no mistake, the goal is to sell the company at this point. That is why BBM is suddenly the focus. They know that they aren't going to stay afloat with phone sales. They'll cut to the bone, and beef up one of their main commodities (BBM) until the sale happens.
I sympathize strongly with the people who lost their job. I don't, however, sympathize with the company that made their decision to go it alone despite overwhelming evidence that there isn't room for another platform. iOS, Android, the Web. That's it. That's all there's going to be for the foreseeable future in mobile. Even Microsoft is failing at this. How much evidence does a company need to see that their strategy was doomed?<p>It's classic innovators dilemma. BlackBerry could think of nothing but protecting their existing business, even with failure staring them in the face. They should have been planning more for the next phase of the company (whether that be selling enterprise servers or whatever else) and made a small, cheap, play at restoring their phone business (probably by forking Android).
I have built software for large BlackBerry customers and met with RIMM people before. 3 years ago, I had suggested they should create an enterprise-oriented Android phones, such like Amazon created media-oriented tablets. 3 years ago, RIMM was still the #1 in enterprise smartphone market, and they had great chance to succeed in that area.<p>However, most companies are afraid to compete on fair battle background (Android). So instead of one, RIMM chose to fight 4 battles at the same time, hardware, software, ecosystem, marketing, and it lost on all of them. Now it is too late to change the fate. RIMM management was too afraid to change (really really afraid). It is said when I met RIMM people, and saw they couldn't do anything to save the sinking ship.
If any new phone wants a decent market share they have to start with the developers - they are the ones who will carry it along until enough 2 year contracts expire to grow the user base. Blackberry simply failed on this front so it's no wonder they are struggling. They followed Microsoft's path of screwing developers which clearly was a bad move.<p>There is always room for new devices, though. If FF or Ubuntu develop the repertoire with the developers first they have a fighting chance. There are pretty much no companies left that can sell just on their history and existing fan-base alone.
From what I have gathered they have not managed the growth hiring people below the original level. A company with 12000 employes should be unmanageable because of bureaucracy anyway. After some point new people only slow you down.
Hope the old core is still there and something will finally come out of this.
The juxtaposition of these two headlines on Ars struck me with some awe:
"Grand Theft Auto V rakes in over $1 billion in three days",
"Blackberry warns of near-$1 billion loss this quarter".
Especially since they're more tangible 'billions' than the Instagram deal.
Relevant Google Trends chart: <a href="https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=google+android%2C+windows+phone%2C+ios%2C+blackberry#q=google%20android%2C%20windows%20phone%2C%20ios%2C%20blackberry&cmpt=q" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=google+android%2C+wi...</a><p>Blackberry's slide starts around October 2011. News search is a little more flat, but that probably reflects the fact that tech journalists like to compare the rise of one thing to the fall of another. Google search reflects what people are looking for in general, so it covers people looking up information on the phone and OS, not just news.<p>Oddly, Blackberry is still in the lead on image and shopping search. It was tied with iOS on youtube until recently.
It just occurred to me that BlackBerry is playing a brilliant strategy. This billion dollar writedown lowers the stocks so it can be taken private. Meanwhile, BlackBerry announces the flagship Z30 to get users excited.<p>Z10 hasn't been out that long, and already they're writing off stock? And Z10 is such an awesome phone, anyone who actually uses one loves it.<p>It could only be for one reason, to take the company private asap.<p>I expect announcement of a sale soon.